~3^~T 





ZZ**m 






BY 



THOMAS HUGHES, M.P. 



Author oj " Tom Browns ScJiool Days." 



VC 




MACMII^AN 4c Co 



jy 






J! 12 !*■ 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

PREFACE I 

CHAPTER I. 

OF KINGS AND KINGSHIP 7 

CHAFER II. 

A THOUSAND YEARS AGO , . . . 15 

CHAPTER III. 

CHILDHOOD 32 

CHAPTER IV. 

CNIHTHOOD 44 

CHAPTER V. 

THE DANE , . . .. 56 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE FIRST WAVE 6S 

CHAPTER VII. 

ALFRED ON THE THRONE 80 

b 



iv COXTEXTS. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE SECOND WAVE 9 1 

CHAPTER IX. 

\'I HELNBY IO ° 

a: x. 

I.I II AN DC NE I I ; 



(I; 
0SPEC1 

111! 

cm 

i HE K1N< 

i HI KING'S i v.'. - 

CHAP1 I 

rHE king's JUSTIO . i ~ ; 

CHAPTER XVI. 

rHE king's ex 

\\ II. 

ill i king's che rch 

: win. 

fHE KING'S FRIENDS . . . . • 



CONTENTS. v 

CHAPTER XIX. 

PAGE 

THE KING'S NEIGHBOURS 228 

CHAPTER XX. 

THE KING'S FOE 240 

CHAPTER XXL 

THE THIRD WAVE 250 

CHAPTER XXII. 

THE KING'S HOME c . . . » 267 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE KING AS AUTHOR 278 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

THE KING'S DEATH AND WILL 301 

CHAPTER XXV. 

THE KING'S SUCCESSORS 311 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

THE END OF THE WHOLE MATTER 31 7 



LIST OF tLLUSTRATIOl 

► AGE 

MA1 , \T THE TRF 

, fi miitf k n 

KINO An ... to fate 7& 

V • LEARNING 



PREFACE. 

The early ages of our country's history have been 
studied, and written and re-written, with a care and 
ability which have left nothing to desire. Every 
source from which light could be drawn has been 
explored by eminent scholars, and probably all the 
facts which will ever be known have been now ascer- 
tained. Kemble, Palgrave, and Thorpe have been 
succeeded by Pearson and Freeman, whose great 
ability and industry every student of those times, 
however humble, must be able to recognise, and to 
whom the present writer is anxious to express his 
deep obligations. Thanks to their labours, whoever 
takes for his subject any portion of our early national 
history will find his task one of comparative ease. 

And of all that early history the life and times of 
Alfred are, beyond all question, the most absorbing 
in interest. The story has been written many times, 
from different points of vkw, by natives and foreigners; 
from Sir John Spelman, the first edition of whose Life 
of Alfred was published in 1709, to Dr. Pauli, whose 

S.L, VIII. B 



PREFACE. 



most admirable and exhaustive work is not yet eighteen 
years old. That book was written " by a German for 
Germans," as we learn from the preface. Its plan, 
Dr. Pauli tells us, was conceived at Oxford, in Novem- 
ber 1848, " at a time when German hearts trembled, 
as they had seldom done before, for the preservation 
of their Fatherland, and especially for the continuance 
of those states which were destined by Heaven for 
the protection and support of German}-." 

Happily no German need now tremble for the 
preservation of his Fatherland, but the problems which 
1848 started still await an answer. The revolutionary 
spur which was then given to the intellectual and 
political activity of Christendom has a 
beyond dooming certain conditions of political and 
social life, and awakening a very genuine and wide* 
Spread longing for some better and higher life for 
nations than has ever yet been real: 

The political earthquake of 1848, then, led Dr. 
Paul] to take so deep an interest in the ;les and 

life-work of King Alfred, that he could not rest until 
he had placed a picture o\ them before his German 
fellow-countrymen, for their study, warning, and 
couragement. The German student felt that some- 
how this story would prove o( value to those in his 
Fatherland who were struggling for some solid ground 
upon which to plant their feet, in the midst of the 
throes of the last great European crisis. A like con- 
viction has led me to attempt the same work, .m 



PREFACE. 3 

Englishman for Englishmen, in a crisis which seems 
likely to prove at least as serious as that of 1848. 

For the events of the last few years — one may 
perhaps say more particularly of the last few months 
— have forced on those who think on such subjects at 
all, the practical need of examining once more the 
principles upon which society, and the life of nations, 
rest How are nations to be saved from the tyranny 
or domination of arbitrary will, whether of a Caesar 
or a mob ? is the problem before us, and one which 
is becoming daily, more threatening, demanding an 
answer at the peril of national life. France for the 
moment is the country where the question presses 
most urgently. There the most democratic of Euro- 
pean peoples seemed to have given up her ideal 
commonwealth in despair, and Imperialism or 
Caesarism had come out most nakedly, in this 
generation, under our own eyes. The Emperor of 
the French has shown Christendom, both in practice 
by his government, and theoretically in his writings, 
what this Imperialism is, upon what it stands. The 
answer, maturing now these seventeen years, has 
come in a shout from a whole people, thoroughly 
roused at last, " Away with it ! It is undermining 
society, it is destroying morality. Brave, simple, honest 
life is becoming, if it has not already become, im- 
possible under its shadow. Away with this, at once, 
and for ever, let what will come in its place ! " 

But when we anxiously look for what is to come 
b 2 



PRE FA CE. 



in its place in France, we are baffled and depressed. 
We seem to be gazing only into the hurly-burly of 
driving cloud and heaving sea, in which as yet no 
trace of firm land is visible. The cry for "minis- 
terial responsibility," or u government by the majo- 
rity," seems for the moment to express the b 
mind of the nation. Alas ! has not Louis Napoleon 
shown us how little worth lies in such reined: 
Responsibility to whom ? — To no person at all, I 
presume the answer would be, but to the majority 
of the nation, who are the source of all 
whose will is to be done whatever it may be. But 
the Emperor of the French would acknowledge such 
responsibility, would maintain that his own govern- 
ment is founded on it, that he is the very inc 
nation of "government by the majority; 91 and one 
cannot but own that he has at least proved how 
easily such phrases may be turned to the benefit 
of his own Imperialism. 

The problem has been showifl . though 

in so urgent a form, in England, in the late discus- 
sions as to the House o( Lords. That part of our 
machinery for government has been so nearly in 
conflict with the national will as to rouse a host 
questions. What principle worth preserving 
this House of Lords represent ? Is it c 
with government by the majority? Does not 
existence involve a constant protest against the id 
that the people are the source oi all powei 



PREFACE. 5 

such a protest endurable, if the machinery for govern- 
ing, in so complicated a state of society as ours, is 
to work smoothly? 

Here, again, one has heard little beyond angry 
declamation ; but the discussion has shown that the 
time is come when we English can no longer stand by 
as interested spectators only, but in which every one 
of our own institutions will be sifted with rigour, and 
will have to show cause for its existence. In every 
other nation of Christendom the same restlessness 
exists, the same ferment is going on ; and under 
many different forms, and by many different roads, 
the same end is sought — the deliverance from the 
dominion of arbitrary will, the establishment of some 
order in which "righteousness shall be the girdle of 
the loins, and truth the girdle of the reins," of who- 
ever wields the sovereign power amongst the nations 
of the earth. 

As a help in this search, this life of the typical 
English King is here offered, not to historical stu- 
dents, but to ordinary English readers. The writer 
has not attempted, and is not competent to take part 
in, the discussion of any of the deeply interesting 
critical, antiquarian, and philological questions which 
cross the path of every student of Anglo-Saxon 
history, and which have been so ably handled by the 
authors already referred to, and many others. As a 
politician, both in and out of the House of Commons, 
he has had to examine for himself for many years 



PREFACE. 



the actual ground upon which the political life of the 
English nation stands, that he might solve for his 
own individual guidance, according to the best light 
he could get, the most practical of all questions for a 
public man, — what leader he should support ? what 
reforms he should do his best to obtain? .Born in 
Alfred's own county, and having been from childhood 
familiar with the spots which history and tradition 
associate with some of the most critical events of the 
great King's life, he has reached the same conclusion 
as Dr. Pauli by a different process. He has learnt to 
look upon the Saxon King as the true representative 
of the nation in contrast to the great Cesar, so nearly 
his contemporary, whose aim was to weld together 
all nations and tribes in one lifeless empire under 
own sceptre. That empire of Charlemagne has b 
exalted of late as the beginning of all true order for 
Europe and America. If this were so, it would be 
indeed a waste of time to dwell on the life and work 
of Alfred. If, however, precisely the contrary be 
true, it must be worth while to follow as faithfully 
we can the simple honest life of the -rear Saxon 
King, endeavouring to ascertain upon what ground 
that life and work of the ninth century - and 

whether the same ground abides in the nineteenth 
all nations, alike for those who have visible kings and 
those who are without them. 



THE LIFE 



OF 



ALFRED THE GREAT. 



CHAPTER I. 

OF KINGS AND KINGSHIP. 

"We come now to the last form of heroism, that 
which we call ' Kingship/ — The Commander over 
men ; he to whose will our wills are to be sub- 
ordinated, and loyally surrender themselves and find 
their welfare in doing so, may be reckoned the most 
important of great men." " In all sections of English 
life the God-made king is needed, is pressingly de- 
manded in most, in some cannot longer without peril 
as of conflagration be dispensed with." So spoke, 
twenty years ago, the teacher, prophet, seer — call 
him what you will — who has in many ways moved 
more deeply than any other the hearts of this gene- 
ration. Has not the conscience of England responded 
to the words ? Have not most of us felt that in some 
shape — not perhaps in that which he preaches — what 



LIFE OF ALFRED THE ORE A T. 



Mr. Carlyle calls " kingship " is, in fact, our great need ; 
that without it our modern life, however full for the 
well-to-do amongst us of all that can interest, stimu- 
late, gratify our intellects, passions, appetites, is a 
poor and mean thing, ever getting poorer and meaner. 
Yes, this cry, to which Mr. Carlyle first gave voice 
in our day, has been going up from all sections of 
English society these many years, in sad, fierce, or 
plaintive accents. The poet most profoundly in 
sympathy with his time calls for 

" A strong still man in a blatant land, 
Whatever you name him what care I, 
Aristocrat, autocrat, democrat, one 
Who can rule and dare not lie." 

The newest school of philosophy preaches an 
"organized religion," an hierarchy of the best* and 
ablest. In an inarticulate way the confession rises 
from the masses of our people, that they too feel on 
every side of them the need of wise and strong 
government — of a will to which their will may loyally 
submit — before all other needs; have been groping 
blindly after it this long while ; begin to know that 
their daily life is in daily peril for want of it, in this 
country of limited land, air, and water, and practically 
unlimited wealth. 

But Democracy, — how about Democracy ? We had 
thought a cry for it, and not for kings, God-made or 
of any other kind, was the characteristic of our time. 
Certainly kings such as we have seen them have not 
gained or deserved much reverence of late years, are 
not likely to be called for with any great earnest- 



OF KINGS AND KINGSHIP. 



ness, by those who feel most need of guidance, and 
deliverance, in the midst of the bewildering conditions 
and surroundings of our time and our life. 

Twenty years ago the framework of society went 
all to pieces over the greater part of Christendom, 
and the kings just ran away or abdicated, and the 
people, left pretty much to themselves, in some places 
made blind work of it. Solvent and well-regulated 
society caught a glimpse of that same "big black 
democracy/' — the monster, the Frankenstein, as they 
hold him, at any rate the great undeniable fact of our 
time, — a glimpse of him moving his huge limbs about, 
uneasily and blindly. Then, mainly by the help of 
broken pledges and bayonets, the so-called kings 
managed to get the gyves put on him again, and to 
shut him down in his underground prison. That was 
the sum of their work in the last great European 
crisis ; not a thankworthy one from the people's 
point of view. However, society was supposed to be 
saved, and the " party of order " so called breathed 
freely. No ; for the 1 848 kind of king there is surely 
no audible demand anywhere. 

Here in England in that year we had our 10th of 
April, and muster of half a million special constables 
of the comfortable classes, with much jubilation over 
such muster, and mutual congratulations that we 
were not as other men, or even as these Frenchmen, 
Germans, and the like. Taken for what it was worth, 
let us admit that the jubilations did not lack some 
sort of justification. The 10th of April muster may 
be perhaps accepted as a sign that the reverence 



io LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

for the constable's staff has not quite died out yet 
amongst us. But let no one think that for this reason 
Democracy is one whit less inevitable in England 
than on the Continent ; or that its sure and steady 
advance, and the longing for its coming, which all 
thoughtful men recognise, however little they may 
sympathise with them, is the least incompatible with 
the equally manifest longing for what our people intend 
by this much-worshipped and much-hated name. 

For what does Democracy mean to us English in 
these years ? Simply an equal chance for all ; a fair 
field for the best men, let them start from where they 
will, to get to the front ; a clearance out of sham 
governors, and of unjust privilege, in every depart- 
ment of human affairs. It cannot be too often 
repeated, that they who suppose the bulk of our 
people want less government, or fear the man who 
"can rule and dare not lie," know little of them. 
Ask any representative of a popular constituency, 
or other man with the means of judging, what the 
people are ready for in this direction. He will 
tell you that, in spite perhaps of all he can say 
or do, they will go for compulsory education, the 
organization of labour (including therein the sharp 
extinction of able-bodied pauperism), the utilization 
of public lands, and other reforms of an equally 
decided character. That for these purposes they 
desire more government, not less ; will support with 
enthusiasm measures, the very thought of which takes 
away the breath and loosens the knees of ordinary 
politicians ; will rally with loyalty and trustfulness to 



OF KINGS AND KINGSHIP. II 

men who will undertake these things with courage 
and singleness of purpose. 

But admit all this to be so, yet why talk of kings 
and kingship ? Why try to fix our attention on the 
last kind of persons who are likely to help ? Kings 
have become a caste, sacred or not, as you may 
happen to hold, but at any rate a markedly separate 
caste. Is not this a darkening of counsel, a using of 
terms which do not really express your meaning ? 
Democrats we know : Tribunes of the people we 
know. When these are true and single-minded, they 
are the men for the work you are talking of. To do 
it in any thorough way, in any way which will last, 
you must have men in real sympathy with the masses. 

True. But what if the special function of the king 
is precisely this of sympathy with the masses ? Our 
biblical training suuely would seem to teach that 
it is. When all people are to bow before the king, 
all nations to do him service, it is because " he shall 
deliver the poor when he crieth, the needy also, and 
him that hath no helper." When the king prays for 
the judgments and righteousness of God, it is in order 
that " he may judge Thy people according unto right, 
and defend the poor." When the king sits in judg- 
ment, the reason of his sentence, whether of approval 
or condemnation, turns upon this same point of 
sympathy with the poor and weak, — " Inasmuch as 
ye have done it, or not done it, to the least of these 
my brethren." From one end to the other of the 
Bible we are face to face with these words, "king" and 
"kingdom;" from the first word to the last the same 



12 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT 

idea of the king's work, the kings functions, runs 
through history, poem, parable, statute, and binds 
them together. The king fills at least as large a 
space in our sacred books as in Mr. Carlyles ; the 
writers seem to think him, and his work, quite as 
necessary to the world as Mr. Carlyle does. 

To those who look on the Hebrew scriptures as mere 
ancient Asian records, which have been luckily pre- 
served, and are perhaps as valuable as the Talmud or 
the Vedas, this peculiarity in them will seem of little 
moment. To those who believe otherwise — who hold 
that these same scriptures contain the revelation of 
God to the family of mankind so far as words can 
reveal Him — the fact is one which deserves and must 
claim their most serious thought. If they desire to be 
honest with themselves, they will not play fast and 
loose with the words, or the ideas ; will rather face 
them, and grudge no effort to get at what real mean- 
ing or force lies for themselves in that which the 
Bible says as to kings and kingdoms, if indeed 
any be left for us in A.D. 1869. As a help in the 
study we may take this again from the author 
already quoted: — "The only title wherein I with 
confidence trace eternity, is that of king. He carries 
with him an authority from God, or man will never 
give it him. Can I choose my own king ? I can 
choose my own King Popinjay and play what farce 
or tragedy I may with him: but he who is to be 
my ruler, whose will is to be higher than my will, 
was chosen for me in heaven. Neither except in 
such obedience to the heaven-chosen is freedom so 



OF KINGS AND KINGSHIP. l3 

much as conceivable." Words of very startling im- 
port these, no doubt ; but the longer we who accept 
the Hebrew scriptures as books of the revelation of 
God think on them, the more we shall find them 
sober and truthful words. At least that is the belief 
of the present writer, which belief he hopes to make 
clearer in the course of this work to those who care 
to go along with him. 

And now for the word " king," for it is well that 
we should try to understand it before we approach 
the life of the noblest Englishman who ever bore it. 
u Cyning, by contraction king," says Mr. Freeman, 
" is evidently closely connected with the word Cyn, 
or Kin. The connexion is not without an important 
meaning. The king is the representative of the 
race, the embodiment of its national being, the 
child of his people and not their father." Another 
eminent scholar, Sir F. Palgrave, derives king from 
" Cen," a Celtic word signifying the head. " The 
commander of men," says Mr. Carlyle, " is called 
Rex, Regulator, Roi : our own name is still better 
— King, Konning, which means Can-ning, able man." 
And so the ablest scholars are at issue over the 
word, which would seem to be too big to be tied 
down to either definition. Surely, whatever the true 
etymology may be, the ideas — u representative," 
"head," "ablest" — do not clash, but would rather seem 
necessary to one another to bring out the full mean- 
ing of the word. " The representative of the race, the 
embodiment of its national being," must be its "head," 
should be its "ablest, its best man." At any rate 



H LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

they were gathered up in him whose life we must 
now try to follow: "England's herdman," " England's 
darling," " England's comfort," as he is styled by the 
old chroniclers. A thousand years have passed since 
Alfred was struggling with the mighty work appointed 
for him by God in this island. What that work 
was, how it was done, what portion of it remains 
to this day, it will be our task and our privilege 
to consider. 



CHAPTER II. 



A THOUSAND YEARS AGO. 



" For it thousand years in Thy sight are birt as yesterday^ seeing it is 
past as a watch in the night" 

The England upon which the child Alfred first looked 
out must, however, detain us for a short time. And 
at the threshold we are met with the fact that the 
names of his birthplace, Wanating (Wantage); of the, 
shire in which it lies, Berroc-shire (Berkshire) ; of 
the district stretching along the chalk hills above 
it, Ashdown ; of the neighbouring villages, such as 
Uffington, Ashbury, Kingston-Lisle, Compton, &c., 
remain unchanged. The England of a thousand 
years ago was divided throughout into shires, 
hundreds, tithings, as it remains to this day. Al- 
most as much might until lately have been said 
of the language. At least the writer, when a boy, 
has heard an able Anglo-Saxon scholar of that day 
maintain, that if one of the churls who fought at 
Ashdown with Alfred could have risen up from his 
breezy grave under a barrow, and walked down the 
hill into Uffington, he would have been understood 
without difficulty by the peasantry. That generation 



16 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 



has passed away, and with them much of the racy 
vernacular which so charmed the Anglo-Saxon anti- 
quary thirty years ago. But let us hear one of the 
most eminent of contemporary English historians on 
the general question. "The main divisions of the 
country," writes Mr. Freeman, " the local names of the 
vast mass of its towns and villages, were fixed when 
the Norman came, and have survived with but little 
ghange to our own day. ... He found the English 
nation occupying substantially the same territory, 
and already exhibiting in its laws, its language, its 
national character, the most essential of the features 
which it still retains. Into the English nation, which 
he thus found already formed, his own dynasty and 
his own followers were gradually absorbed. The 
conquered did not become Normans, but the con- 
querors did become Englishmen." Grand, tough, 
much-enduring old English stock, with all thy im- 
perviousness to ideas, thy Philistinism, afflicting to 
the children of light in these latter days, thy obdurate, 
nay pig-headed, reverence for old forms out of which 
the life has flown, adherence to old ways which have 
become little better than sloughs of despond, what 
man is there that can claim to be child of thine whose 
pulse does not quicken, and heart leap up, at the 
thought ? Who has not at the very bottom of his 
soul faith in thy future, in thy power to stand fast in 
this time of revolutions, which is upon and before 
thee and all nations, as thou hast stood through many 
a dark day of the Lord in the last thousand years ? 
But though the divisions of the country, and the 



A THOUSAND YEARS AGO. 17 

names, remain the same, or nearly so, we must not for- 
get the great superficial change which has taken place 
by the clearance of the forest tracts. These spread, 
a thousand years ago, over very large districts in all 
parts of England. In these forests the droves of swine, 
which formed a considerable portion of the wealth, and 
whose flesh furnished the staple food, of the people, 
wandered, feeding on acorns and beech-mast. Here, 
too, the outlaws, who abounded in those unsettled 
times, found shelter and safety ; and they were used 
alike by Saxon and Dane for ambush and stronghold. 
Christian monks, escaping from the sack of their 
abbeys and cathedrals, and carrying hardly-saved 
relics, fled to them, and often lived in them for years ; 
and heathen bands, beaten and hard pressed by 
Alfred or his aldermen, could often foil their pursuers, 
and lie hidden in their shade, until the Saxon soldiery 
had gone home to their harvest, or their sowing. The 
sudden blows which the Danes seem always to have 
been able to strike in the beginning of their cam- 
paigns were made possible by these great tracts of 
forest, through which they could steal without notice. 
There were a few great trunk roads, such as Watling 
Street, which ran from London to Chester, and the 
Ickenild Way, through Berks, Wilts, and Somerset- 
shire, and highways or tracks connecting villages and 
towns. These seem to have been numerous and 
populous; and in them and the monasteries, before 
Alfred's time, trades had begun to flourish. We even 
find that there must have been skilful jewellers and 
weavers in Wessex ; witness the vessels in gold and 

S.L. VIII. Q 



IS LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 



silver-gilt, and silk dresses and hangings, which his 
father and he carried to Rome as presents to the 
Pope, and Alfred's jewel, found in 1693 in Newton 
Park, near Athelney, and now in the Ashmolean 
Museum. The lands immediately adjoining towns, 
monasteries, and the houses of aldermen and thegns 
were well cultivated, and produced cereals in abun- 
dance, and orchards and vineyards seem to have been 
much cared for. The state of the country, however, 
is best summed up by Kemble : — "On the natural 
clearings of the forest, or on spots prepared by man 
for his own uses ; in valleys bounded by gentle 
acclivities which poured down fertilizing streams ; or 
on plains which here and there rose clothed with 
verdure above surrounding marshes ; slowly, and step 
by step, the warlike colonists adopted the habits and 
developed the character of peaceful agriculturists. 
The towns which had been spared in the first rush of 
war gradually became deserted and slowly crumbled 
to the soil, beneath which their ruins are yet found 
from time to time, or upon which shapeless masses 
yet remain to mark the sites of a civilization whose 
bases were not laid deep enough. All over England 
there soon existed a network of communities, the 
principle of whose being was separation as regarded 
each other, the most intimate union as respected the 
individual members of each. Agricultural not com- 
mercial, dispersed not centralized, content within 
their own limits, and little given to wandering, they 
relinquished in a great degree the habits and feelings 
which had united them as military adventurers, and 



A THOUSAND YEARS AGO. 19 

the spirit which had achieved the conquest of an 
empire was now satisfied with the care of maintain- 
ing inviolate a little peaceful plot, sufficient for the 
cultivation of a few simple households." 

Bishop Wilfrid, a century before, had instructed the 
South Saxons in improved methods of fishing, and 
they were energetic hunters, so that their tables were 
well provided with lighter delicacies, though as a 
people they preferred heavy and strong meats and 
drinks. Their meals were frequent, at which the 
boiled and baked meats were handed round to the 
guests on spits, each helping himself as he had a 
mind. The heavy feeding was followed by heavy 
carousings of mead and ale ; and, for rich people, 
wine, and " pigment," a drink made of wine, honey, 
and spices, and " morat," a drink of mulberry-juice 
and honey. Harpers and minstrels played and sang 
while the drinking went on, providing such intellectual 
food as our fathers cared to take, and jugglers and 
jesters were ready, with their tumblings of one kind 
or another, when the guests wearied of the perform- 
ances of the higher artists. 

Song-craft was at this time less cultivated in Eng- 
land, except by professors, than it had been a hundred 
years before. Then every guest was expected to take 
his turn, and it would seem to have been somewhat of 
a disgrace for a man not to be able to sing, or recite 
some old Teutonic ballad to music. Thus we find 
in the celebrated story of Caedmon, told in Bede's 
" Ecclesiastical History," that though he had come 
to full age he had never learnt any poetry, " and 

C 2 



2D LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

therefore at entertainments, when it had been 
deemed for the sake of mirth that all in turn should 
sing to the harp, he would rise for shame from the 
table when the harp approached him, and go out" 
The rest of the story is so characteristic of the times 
that we may well allow Bede to finish it in this place. 
" One time when he had done this, and left the house 
of the entertainment, he went to a neat stall of which 
he had charge for the night, and there set his limbs 
to rest, and fell asleep. Then a man stood by him in 
a dream and hailed him by name, and said, 'Caedmon, 
sing me something/ Then answered he, ' I cannot 
sing anything, and therefore I went out from the 
entertainment and came hither for that I could not 
sing/ But the man said, i However, thou canst sing 
to me/ Csedmon asked then, ' What shall I sing ? ' 
and the man answered, t Sing me Creation/ When 
he had received this answer, then began he at once 
to sing in praise of God the Creator verses and 
words which he had never heard. This was the 
beginning: — 

" * Now let us praise 

The keeper of heaven's kingdom, 

The Creator's might, 

And the thought of His mind, 

The works of the World-Father — 

How of all wonders 

He was the beginning. 

The holy Creator 

First shaped heaven 

A roof for earth's children ; 

Then the Creator, 

The keeper of mankind, 



A THOUSAND YEARS AGO. 21 



The Eternal Lord, 
The Almighty Father, 
Afterwards made the earth 
A fold for men.' 

Then arose he from sleep, and all that he sleeping 
had sung he held fast in his memory, and soon added 
to them many words as of a song worthy of God. 
Then came he on the morrow to the town-reeve who 
was his alderman, and told him of the gift he had 
gotten, and the town-reeve took him to the abbess 
(St. Hilda), and told her. Then she ordered to gather 
all the wise men, and bade him in their presence tell 
his dream and sing the song, that by the doom of 
them all it might be proved what it was, and whence 
it came. Then it seemed to all, as indeed it was, that 
a heavenly gift had been given him by the Lord him- 
self. Then they related to him a holy speech, and 
bade him try to turn that into sweet song. And when 
he had received it he went home to his house, and 
coming again on the morrow sang them what they 
had related to him in the sweetest voice." So 
Caedmon was taken by Abbess Hilda into one of her 
monasteries, and there sang " the outgoing of Israel's 
folk from the land of the Egyptians, and the ingoing 
of the Land of Promise, and of Christ's incarnation 
and sufferings and ascension, and many other spells 
of Holy Writ. But he never could compose anything 
of leasing or of idle song, but those only which 
belonged to religion, and became a pious tongue 
to sing." 

The cowherd getting his inspiration, and carrying 



22 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 



it at once to his town-reeve; the reference to the 
saintly abbess ; the conference of the wise men of the 
neighbourhood to pass their doom on the occurrence ; 
and the consequent retirement of Csedmon from the 
world, and devotion to the cultivation of his gift under 
the shadow of the Church, form a picture of one corner 
of England, a thousand years ago, which may help 
us to understand the conditions of life amongst our 
ancestors in several respects. For one thing it brings 
us directly into contact with the Church — in this 
ninth century the most obvious and important fact in 
England, as in every other country of Christendom. 
Churches have been divided into those that audibly 
preach and prophesy ; those that are struggling to 
preach and prophesy, but cannot yet ; and those that 
are gone dumb with old age, and only mumble de- 
lirium prior to dissolution. This would look like an 
exhaustive division at first sight, but yet the English 
Church, at the time of Alfred's birth, would scarcely 
fall under either category. 

Up to the beginning of the ninth century the 
history of the Church in England had been one of 
extraordinary activity and earnestness. She had not 
only completed her work of conversion within the 
island, and established centres from which the highest 
education and civilization then attainable flowed out 
on all the Teutonic kingdoms, from the English 
Channel to the Frith of Forth, but had also sent 
forth a number of such missionaries as St. Boniface, 
•such scholars as Alcuin, to help in the establishment 
of their Master's kingdom on the Continent. 



A THOUSAND YEARS AGO. 23 

The sort of work which she was still doing in 
England, in the eighth century, may be gathered 
from the authentic accounts of the lives of such men 
as St. Cuthbert, who is said to have been Alfred's 
patron saint, which may easily be separated from 
the miraculous legends with which they are loaded. 
St. Cuthbert from his boyhood had devoted himself 
to monastic life, and had risen to be rector of his 
monastery, when some great epidemic passed over 
the northern counties. 

"Many then, in that time of great pestilence, 
profaned their profession by unrighteous doings, 
and — neglecting the mysteries of the holy faith in 
which they had been instructed — hastened and 
crowded to the erring cures of idolatry, as if they 
could ward off the chastisement sent by God their 
maker by magic or charms, or any secret of devil- 
craft. To correct both these errors, the man of God 
often went out of his monastery, and sometimes on 
a horse, at other times on his feet, came to the places 
lying round, and preached and taught to the erring 
the way of steadfastness in the truth. It was at that 
time the custom with folk of the English kin that 
when a mass priest came into a town they should all 
come together to hear God's word, and would gladly 
hear the things taught and eagerly follow by deeds 
the words they could understand. Now the holy 
man of God, Cuthbert, had so much skill and 
learning, and so much love to" the divine lore which 
he had begun to teach, and such a light of angelic 
looks shone from him, that none of those present 



24 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

durst hide the secrets of the heart from him, but all 
openly confessed their deeds, and their acknowledged 
sins bettered with true repentance, as he bade. He 
was wont chiefly to go through those places and to 
preach in those hamlets which were high up on 
rugged mountains, frightful to others to visit, and 
whose people by their poverty and ignorance hin- 
dered the approach of teachers. These hindrances he 
by pious labour and great zeal overcame, and went 
out from the monastery often a w T hole week, some- 
times two or three, and often, also, for a whole month 
would not return home, but abode in the wild places, 
and called and invited the unlearned folk to the 
heavenly life both by the word of his love and by 
the work of his virtue." 

Thus teaching the poor in the highest matters, and 
also showing them with his own hands how to till 
and sow — " it being the will of the Heavenly Giver 
that crops of grain should be up-growing " in waste 
places, — and how to find and husband water, Cuth- 
bert, and such priests as he, spent their lives. But a 
change had passed over the Church in the last fifty 
years. The Bedes and Alcuins had died out, and 
left no successors. Learning was grossly neglected, 
and the slothful clergy had allowed things to come 
to such a pass that Alfred in his youth could find 
no master south of the Thames to teach him Latin. 
Even the study of the Scriptures was very negligently 
performed, and the education of the people was no 
longer cared for at all. Bishop Ealstan, soldier and 
statesman, had succeeded the Alcuins; and St. 



A THOUSAND YEARS AGO. 25 

Swithin, bent on advancing the interests of Rome, 
the St. Bonifaces and St. Cuthberts. 

Still, however, the Church in Wessex, if not 
audibly preaching and prophesying, was very far 
from having gone dumb with old age. She had 
within her the seeds of strength and growth, for 
Rome had not laid her hand heavily on the western 
island. The advice given by Pope Gregory to 
St. Augustine, in answer to the questions of the 
latter as to the customs which should be insisted on 
in the new Church, had been on the whole faithfully 
followed. " It seems good and is more agreeable to 
me," writes the great statesman-pope, "that whatso- 
ever thou hast found, either in the Roman Church, or 
in Gaul, or in any other, that was more pleasing to 
Almighty God, thou shouldst carefully choose that, 
and set it to be held fast in the Church of the English 
nation, which now yet is new in faith. For the things 
are not to be loved for places, but the places for good 
things. Therefore, what things thou choosest as 
pious, good, and right from each of sundry Churches, 
these gather thou together, and settle into a custom 
in the mind of the English nation." And again as to 
uncanonical marriages, which are to be resisted but not 
punished with denial of the Communion, " for at this 
time the Holy Church corrects some things through 
zeal, bears with some through mildness, overlooks 
some through consideration ; and so bears and over- 
looks that often by bearing and overlooking she checks 
the opposing evil. ,, 

And the policy had answered in many ways. 



26 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

England had still the inestimable boon of services 
in her own tongue, and a clergy who were not celi- 
bate. So the Church had prospered, and the land 
was full of noble churches, abbeys, monasteries; 
but the ecclesiastics had not emancipated themselves 
from the civil governor, and their persons and pro- 
perty were answerable to him for breach of the laws 
of the realm. Mortmain had not yet become the 
" dead hand;" and while Church lands were at least 
as well tilled and cared for as those of king or thegn, 
and sent their equal quota of fighting rruen to the field 
(often led by such bishops as Ealstan of Sherborne, 
whom Alfred must have known well in his youth), 
Church establishments w T ere the refuge for thousands 
of men and women, the victims of the wild wars of 
those wild times, the seats of such little learning as 
was to be found in the land, and the chief places in 
which working in metals, and weaving, and other 
manual industries could be learned or successfully 
practised. 

Yet pagan traditions still to some extent held 
their own. For instance, the descent of the royal 
race of Cerdic, from which Alfred sprung, from the 
old Teuton gods, is as carefully traced by Bishop 
Asser and other chroniclers up to H Woden, who 
was the son of Frithewalde, who was the son of 
Trealaf, who was the son of Frithawulf, who was 
the son of Geta, whom the Pagans worshipped 
as a god ;" as the further steps which carry the 
line on up to " Sceaf the son of Noah, who was 
born in the Ark." Pagan rites and ceremonies, 



A THOUSAND YEARS AGO. 27 

modified in many ways, but clearly traceable to their 
origin, were common enough. Still the two centuries 
and upwards since St. Augustine's time had done 
their work. England was not only in name a Chris- 
tian country, but a living faith in Christ had entered 
into, and was practically the deepest and strongest 
force in, the national life. The conditions of faith 
and worship amongst the West Saxons, and generally 
the relations of his people with the Invisible, if not 
wholly satisfactory, were yet of a hopeful kind for 
a young prince of the royal race of Cerdic. 

In other departments of human life in Wessex the 
outlook had also much of hopefulness in it, as well as 
deep causes of anxiety, for Alfred, as he grew up in 
his father's court. That court was a migratory one. 
The King of the West Saxons had no fixed home. 
Wherever in the kingdom the need was sorest, there 
was his place ; and so from Kent to Devonshire, 
from the Welsh Marches to the Isle of Wight, we 
find him moving backwards and forwards, wherever 
a raid of Britons or Danes, the consecration of a 
church, a quarrel between two of his aldermen, the 
assembly of his Great Council, might call him. The 
government lies indeed heavily on his shoulders. 
He must be the first man in fight, in council, in 
worship, in the chase. True he can do no imperial 
act, cannot make a law, impose a tax, call out an 
army, or make a grant of folkland, without the sanc- 
tion of his witan ; but in all things the initiative is 
with him, and without him the witan is powerless. 

That famous Council, common to all the Teutonic 



28 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

tribes, had by this time amongst the West Saxons 
lost its original character of a gathering of all freemen. 
Probably no one below the rank of thegn attended the 
meetings of the witan in the time of Ethelwulf. The 
thegn was, however, simply an owner of land, and so 
a seat in the Great Council was in fact open to any 
cheorl, even it would seem to any thrall who could 
earn or win as his own five hides of land, a church, a 
kitchen, a bell-house, and a burghate seat. 

The possession of land, then, was the first object 
with the Englishman of the ninth, as it is with the 
Englishman of the nineteenth century. At that time 
the greater part of the kingdom was still folkland, 
belonging to the nation, and only alienable by the 
king and his witan. When, however, any portion of 
the common inheritance was so alienated, the grantee 
held of no feudal lord, not even of the king. As a 
rule, the land became his in a sense in which, theoreti- 
cally at least, no man has owned an acre in England 
since the Norman Conquest. Subject only to march- 
ing to meet invasion, and the making and restoring 
of roads and bridges, the Saxon freeholder held 
his land straight from the Maker of it. 

But it is not only in the case of the common or 
folkland that a strong tinge of what would now be 
called socialism manifests itself in the life of our fore- 
fathers. Teutonic law, as Mr. Kemble has shown, 
bases itself on the family bond. The community in 
which he is born and lives, the guild to which he 
has bound himself, the master whom he serves, are 
responsible for the misdoings of the citizen crafts- 



A THOUSAND YEARS AGO. 29 



man, servant. The world-old question, "Am I my 
brother's keeper ?" was answered with emphasis in the 
affirmative here in England a thousand years back. 
Indeed the responsibility was carried in some direc- 
tions to strange lengths, for it seems that if a man 
should "for three nights entertain in his house a mer- 
chant or stranger, and should supply him with food, 
and the guest so received should commit a crime, the 
host must bring him to justice or answer for it." On 
the other hand, so jealous were our fathers of vaga- 
bonds in the land, that " if a stranger or foreigner 
should wander from the highway, and then neither 
call out nor sound horn, he is to be taken for a thief 
and killed, or redeemed by fine," for in truth there are 
so many pagan Danes, and other disreputable persons, 
scattered up and down the land, that society must 
protect itself in a summary manner. 

This it did by laws which, up to Alfred's time, 
were administered under the king by aldermen. 
These great officers presided over shires, or smaller 
districts, and held an authority which, under weak 
kings, amounted almost to independence. The 
offices were hereditary, and no special training, 
or education of any kind, was required of the 
holders. Simple as the code of King Ina was, 
such judges were not competent to administer it ; 
and Alfred, when at length he had time for them, 
found the most searching reforms required in this 
deoartment. 

This code of Ina, the one in force in Wessex, was 
mainly a list of penalties for murder, assaults, rob- 



30 



LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREA T. 



beries, injuries to forests and cattle. It contained 
also provisions as to the treatment of slaves, who 
formed a considerable portion of the population. 
They were for the most part Welsh, and other 
prisoners of war, or men who had been sentenced 
to servitude. The laws were enforced by fine or 
corporal punishment, imprisonment being unknown 
in the earlier codes. Such as they were, the laws 
of the Anglo-Saxons were at least in their own 
mother tongue, and could be understood by the 
people. In the king's and aldermen's courts, as 
well as in church and at the altar, the Englishman 
was able to plead and pray in his own language, 
a strong proof of the vigour of the national life, 
after making allowance for all the advantages of 
insular position, and fortunate accident. 

We may note also that these islanders are singu- 
larly just to their women, far more so than their de- 
scendants on either side of the Atlantic have come to 
be after the lapse of a thousand years. Married women 
could sue and be sued, and inherit and dispose of 
property of all kinds. Women could attend the shire- 
gemot, even the witena-gemot — could sit, that is, on 
vestries, or in parliament — and were protected by 
special laws in matters where their weakness of body 
would otherwise place them at a disadvantage. Our 
fathers acknowledged, and practically enforced, the 
equality of the "spindle half" and the "spear-half" 
of the human family. 

Above the servile class, or the thralls, the nation 
v/as divided broadly into " eorl" and "cheorl," all of 



A THOUSAND YEARS AGO. yi 



whom were freemen, the former gently born, and pos- 
sessing privileges of precedence, which gather surely 
enough round certain families in races amongst whom 
birth is reverenced. 

Under such conditions of life then our West Saxon 
fathers were living in the middle of the ninth century. 
A stolid, somewhat heavy people, entirely divorced 
from their old wandering propensities, and settling 
down, too rapidly perhaps, into plodding, money- 
making habits, in country and town and cloister, 
but capable of blazing up into white battle heat, and 
of fighting with untameable stubbornness, when their 
churches, or homes, or flocks are threatened ; capable 
also, not unfrequentiy, of rare heroism and self- 
sacrifice when a call they can understand comes to 
them. A nation capable of great things under the 
hand of a true king. 



CHAPTER III. 



CHILDHOOD. 



In the year 849, when Alfred was born at the royal 
burgh of Wantage, the youngest child of .Ethelwulf 
and Osberga, the King of the West Saxons had 
already established his authority as lord over the 
other Teutonic kingdoms in England. Until the 
time of Egbert, the father of iEthelwulf, this over- 
lordship had shifted from one strong hand to anotl 
amongst the reigning princes, each of whom, a 
sion served, rose and strove for the dignity of 1 
walda, as it was called. Xow it would be held 1 ; 
Mercian, then by a Northumbrian, and again by a ki 
of East Anglian or Kentish men. But when, in the 
year 800, the same in which the Emperor Charle- 
magne was crowned by the Pope, the Great Council 
of Wessex elected the /Etheling Egbert king oi the 
West Saxons, all such contention came to an end. 
For Egbert, exiled from his own land by the bret- 
walda, Offa of Mercia, had spent thirteen years in the 
service of Charlemagne, and had learned in that school 
how to consolidate and govern kingdoms. He reigned 
thirty-seven years in England, and at his death all the 
land owned him as over-king, though the Xorthum- 



CHILDHOOD. 33 



brians, Mercians, and East Anglians still kept their 
own kings and great councils, who governed within their 
own borders as Egbert's men. In Egbert's later char- 
ters he is called King of the English, and the name of 
Anglia was by him given to the whole kingdom. 

It is said that the last bretwalda and first king of 
all England felt uneasy forebodings as to the destiny 
of his kingdom when he was leaving it to his son and 
successor. Ethelwulf, from his youth up, had been of 
a strongly devotional turn, and was too much under 
the influence of the clergy to please his father. He 
would probably have followed his natural bent, and 
entered holy orders, but that Egbert had no other 
son. So as early as 828 he had been made King of 
Kent, and soon afterwards married Osberga, the 
daughter of his cup-bearer Oslac. There in Kent, 
under the eye t, he reigned for ten years, not 

Otherwise than creditably, making head against the 
Danish pirates, who were already appearing almost 
yearly on the coast, in a manner not unworthy of his 
great father and still greater son. Indeed, if he was 
swayed more than his father liked by churchmen, the 
influence of Ealstan, the soldier-bishop of Sherborne, 
would seem to have been as powerful with him as that 
of the learned and non-combatant Bishop Swithin of 
Winchester, afterwards saint. Nor did courage or 
energy fail him after he had succeeded to Egbert's 
throne, for we find him in the next few years com- 
manding in person in several pitched battles with the 
Danes, the most important of which was fought in 
851 at a place in Surrey which the chroniclers call 

S.L. VIII. T\ 



34 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

Aclea (the oak plain), and which is still named 
Ockley. The village lies a few miles south of Dork- 
ing, under Leith Hill, from which probably Ethel- 
wulf's scouts marked the long line of Pagans, and 
signalled to the King their whereabouts. They were 
marching south, along the old Roman road, the 
remains of which may still be seen near the battle- 
field, heavy with the spoils of London, it is said, part 
of which city they had succeeded in sacking. Ethel- 
wulf fell on them from the higher ground, and 
severely defeated them, recovering all the spoil. 
Again, a little later in the same year, at Sandwich 
in Kent, and after that Wessex was scarcely troubled 
with them for eight years. So now Ethelwulf had 
leisure to turn his thoughts to a pilgrimage to Rome, 
which he had had it in his mind to make ever since 
he had been on the throne. But two years passed and 
still he was not ready to start, and in 853 Buhred, king 
of Mercia, applied to him as his over-lord for help 
against the Welsh. Then Ethelwulf marched himself 
against the Welsh with Buhred, and pursued their king, 
Roderic Mawr, to Anglesey, where he acknowledged 
Ethelwulf as his over-lord, who returning in triumph 
to Wessex, there at the royal burgh of Chippenham 
gave his daughter Ethelswitha to Buhred as his wife. 

Being thus hindered himself from starting on his 
pilgrimage, Ethelwulf in that same year sent his 
young son Alfred, of whom he was already more fond 
than of his elder sons, to Rome, with an honourable 
escort Thete the boy of five was received by Leo IV. 
as his son by adoption, and, it would seem, anointed 



CHILDHOOD. 35 



him king of the West Saxons. The fact is recorded 
both in the Saxon Chronicle and in that of Asser, who 
upon such a point would probably have the King's 
own authority. Whether a step so contrary to all 
English custom was taken by Ethelwulf 's request, in 
order to found a claim to the succession for his 
favourite son, is unknown. In any case, no such 
special claim was ever urged by Alfred himself. 

Leo was no unworthy spiritual father to such a 
boy. He was busy at this time with the enclosure of 
the quarter of the Vatican, the restoration of the old 
walls and fortifications, and the arming and inspiriting 
of the Romans. Moorish pirates had been lately in 
the suburbs of the Eternal City, and had profaned 
the tombs of the Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul. 
What with pagan Danes in the northern seas, and 
Moors in the Mediterranean, the coasts of Christendom 
had little rest a thousand years ago, and it behoved 
even the Holy Father to look to his fighting gear 
and appliances. 

How long Alfred stayed at Rome on this occasion 
is uncertain ; but if the opinion which would seem to 
be gaining ground amongst students is correct — that 
he did not return, but waited the arrival of Ethel- 
wulf two years later — we must give up the well- 
known story of his earning the book of Saxon poems 
from his mother. 

This is related by Asser as having happened when 
he was twelve years old or more, which is clearly 
impossible, as his mother Osberga must have been 
dead before 856, when his father married Judith, as 

D 2 



36 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT, 



we shall hear presently. However, the tale is thus 
told by the old chronicler, the personal friend of 
Alfred : "Ona certain day, his mother was showing 
him and his brothers a book of Saxon poetry which 
she held in her hand, and said, ' Whichever of you 
shall first learn this book shall have it for his own/ 
Moved by these words, or rather by a divine inspira- 
tion, and allured by the illuminated letters, he spoke 
before his brothers, who though his seniors in years 
were not so in grace, and answered, ' Will you 
really give that book to the one of us who can first 
understand and repeat it to you?' Upon which his 
mother smiled and repeated what she had said. So 
Alfred took the book from her hand and went to 
his master to read it, and in due time brought it 
again to his mother and recited it." 

Now Alfred, one regrets to remark, before his first 
journey to Rome, could scarcely have been old 
enough to get by heart a book of poems, though 
he might have done so after his return, and before his 
second journey in his fathers train. 

This happened in 855. Before starting, Ethelwulf, 
by charter signed in the presence of the bishops 
Swithin and Eahtan, gave one-tenth of his land 
throughout the kingdom for the glory of God and 
his own eternal salvation ; or, as some chroniclers say, 
released one-tenth of all lands from royal service and 
tribute, and gave it up to God. In that same year 
we may also note that an army of the Pagans first 
sat over winter in the Isle of Sheppey. 

A bright brave boy, full of the folk-lore of his own 



CHILDHOOD. 37 



people, with a mind of rare power and sensitiveness 
and docile, loving, reverent soul, crossing France in the 
train of a king, and that king his own father — enter- 
tained now at the court of the grandson of Charle- 
magne, now at the castles of warrior nobles, now by 
prelates whose reputation as learned men is still alive 
— traversing the great Alps, and through the garden 
of the world approaching once again the Eternal City, 
renewing the memories of his childhood amongst its 
ruins and shrines and palaces, under the sky of 
Italy — one cannot but feel that such an episode in 
his young life must have been full of fruit for him 
upon whom were so soon to rest the burden of a life 
and death struggle with the most terrible of foes, 
and of raising a slothful and stolid nation out of 
the darkness and exhaustion in which that struggle 
had left them ? 

And what a year was this of A.D. 855 for a young 
prince with open mind and quick eye to spend in 
Rome ! His godfather, the brave old Pope Leo, on 
his deathbed, dead probably before the arrival of the 
Saxon pilgrims ; the election and inauguration of Bene- 
dict the Third, without appeal to or consultation with 
the Emperor Lothaire, swiftly following — as swiftly 
followed by protest of said Emperor, riots, and the 
flight and speedy return in triumph of Benedict to 
the chair of St. Peter; the illness and death of 
Lothaire himself, the whispered stories of the struggle 
for his corpse between the devils and the startled but 
undaunted monks of Pruim {circumstantibus corpils 
ejus trahi et dctrahi videretur } sed monachis orantibits 



3 8 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

dcciuones stmt fatigati) ; the entrance of young Impe- 
rator Lewis— all these things Alfred must have 
seen and heard with his own eyes and ears in that 
eventful year. 1 

Meantime whether Pope or Emperor, clerical or 
imperial party, were uppermost for the moment, we 
may be sure that the Englishmen were received and 
treated with all honour. For Ethelwulf, besides the 
homage and reverence of an enthusiastic pilgrim, 
brought with him costly gifts, a crown four pounds in 
weight, two dishes, two figures, all of pure gold, urns 
silver-gilt, stoles and robes of richest silk interwoven 
with gold. All these, with munificent sums of out- 
landish coin, this king with a name which no Roman 
can write or speak, brings for the holy father and St. 
Peter's shrine. Before his departure, too, he has 
rebuilt and re-endowed the Saxon schools, and 
promised 300 marks yearly from his royal revenues, 
100 each for the filling of the Easter lamps on the 
shrines of St. Peter and St. Paul with finest oil, 100 
for the private purse of their successor. 

It was not till after Easter in the next year that 
the royal pilgrim took thought of his people in the 
far west, and turned his face homewards, arriving 
again at the court of Charles the Bald in the early 
summer of 856. Through the long vista of years we 
can still get a bright gleam or two of light upon that 
court in those same days. 

1 Did he also see the elevation or attempted elevation of Pope Joan 
to the papacy ? It is a papal legend that an Englishwoman by descent, 
and Joan by name, was elected on the death of Leo IV. 



CHILDHOOD. 39 

Notwithstanding the troubles which were pressing 
on his kingdom from the Danes and Northmen on 
his coasts ; from turbulent nephew Pepin, with infidel 
Saracens for allies, on the south ; from disloyal nobles 
in Aquitaine itself, — the court of Charles the Bald 
was at once stately and magnificent, and the centre 
of all that could be called high culture outside of 
Rome. Charles himself, like Ethelwulf, was under the 
influence of priests, who in fact ruled for him. But 
the head of them, Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims, 
was before all things a statesman and a Frenchman, 
who would maintain jealously his sovereign's authority 
and the liberties of the national Church ; could even 
on occasion rebuke popes for attempted interference 
with the temporal affairs of distant kingdoms, which 
" kings constituted by God permit bishops to rule in 
accordance with their decrees." 

Both king and minister were glad to gather 
scholars and men of note and piety round them ; 
and at Compiegne, or Verberie, in these months, 
Alfred must have come to know at any rate Grim- 
bald, and John Erigena, the former (if not both) of 
whom, in after years, at his invitation, came over to 
live with him and teach the English. John, an Irish- 
man by adoption, if not by birth, was in fact at this 
time master of the school of the palace, or, as we 
should say, tutor to the royal family. In the school- 
room Alfred must have been welcomed by Judith, 
a beautiful and clever girl of fourteen years of age 
or thereabouts ; and Charles, the boy-king of Aqui- 
taine, scarcely older than himself, lately sent home 



40 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

from those parts by the nobles. They there, we may 
fancy, reading and talking with John the Irishman 
on many subjects. He, for his part, for the moment, 
at the instigation of Hincmar, is engaged in discus- 
sion with Abbot Pascasius, who is troubling the minds 
of the orthodox with speculations as to the nature 
and manner of the presence of Christ in the Holy 
Eucharist; with the German monk Gotteschalk, who 
is inviting all persons to consider the doctrine of 
fre@-will with a view to its final settlement to the 
satisfaction of the good folk. John, the Irishman, 
is ready enough to do Hincmar s bidding, does in 
fact do battle with both Pascasius and Gotteschalk, 
but seems likely to finally settle nothing of con- 
sequence in relation to these controversies, as he 
(not, we should imagine, to the satisfaction of 
Archbishop Hincmar) proves to be a strenuous 
maintainer of the right of private judgment, and 
human reason, instead of an orthodox defender of 
the faith. 

Alfred must have been roused unpleasantly from 
his studies in the school of the palace, by the news 
that his father is about to marry the young Judith, 
his fellow-pupil. This ill-starred betrothal takes 
place in July, and on October 1st, at the palace of 
Verberie, the marriage between the Saxon king of 
sixty and upwards, and the French girl of fourteen, is 
celebrated with great magnificence, Hincmar himself 
officiating. The ritual used on the occasion is said to 
be still extant. Judith was placed by her husband's 
side and crowned queen. 



CHILDHOOD. 4 i 



The news of which crowning was like to have 
wrought sore trouble in England, for the Great Council 
of Wessex had made a law in the first year of King 
Egbert's reign, that no woman should be crowned 
queen of the West Saxons. This they did because 
of Eadburgha, the wife of Beorhtric, the last king. 
She being a woman of jealous and imperious temper 
had mixed poison in the cup of Warr, a young noble, 
her husband's friend, of which cup he died, and the 
king having partaken of it, died also. And Eadburgha 
fled, first to Charlemagne, who placed her over a 
convent. Expelled from thence she wandered away 
to Italy, and died begging her bread in the streets of 
Pavia. The West Saxons therefore settled that they 
would have no more queens. So when Ethelbald, the 
eldest living son of the King, who had been ruling in 
England in his father's absence, heard of this crown- 
ing, he took counsel with Ealstan the bishop, and 
Eanwulf the great alderman of Somerset, and it is 
certain that they and other nobles met and bound 
themselves together by a secret oath in the forest of 
Selwood — the great wood, silva magna, or Coit mawr, 
as we learn from Asser, the British called it. Whether 
the object of their oath was the dethronement of 
King Ethelwulf is not known, but it may well be that 
it was so, for on his return he found his people in two 
parts, the one ready to fight for him, and the other for 
his son. 

But Ethelwulf with all his folly was a good man, 
and would not bring such evil on his kingdom. So 
he parted it with his son, he himself retaining Kent 



42 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 



and the crown lands, and leaving Wessex to Ethel- 
bald. The men of Kent had made no such law as 
to women, and there Judith reigned as queen with 
her husband for two years. 

Then the old King died, and, to the horror and 
scandal of the whole realm, Judith his widow was in 
the same year married to Ethelbald, "contrary to 
God's prohibition and the dignity of a Christian, 
contrary also to the custom of all the Pagans." This 
Ethelbald, notwithstanding the scandal and horror, 
carries the matter with a high hand his own way. A 
bold, bad man, for whose speedy removal we may be 
thankful, in view of the times which are so soon 
coming on his country. 

Let us here finish the strange story of this princess, 
through whom all our sovereigns since William the 
Conqueror trace their descent from the Emperor 
Charlemagne. She lived in England for yet two 
years, till the death of Ethelbald, in 860, when, selling 
all her possessions here, she went back to her father's 
court. From thence she eloped, in defiance of her 
father, but with the connivance of her young brother 
Lewis, with Baldwin Bras-de-fer, a Flemish noble. 
The young couple had to journey to Rome to get 
their marriage sanctioned, and make their peace with 
Pope Nicholas I., to whom the enraged Charles had 
denounced her and her lover. Judith, however, seems 
to have had as little trouble with his Holiness as 
with all other men, and returned with his absolu- 
tion, and letters of commendation to her father. 
Charles thereupon made her husband Count of 



CHILDHOOD. 43 



Flanders, and gave him all the country between 
the Scheld, the Sambre, and the sea, "that he 
might be the bulwark of the Frank kingdom against 
the Northmen. ,, 

This trust Baldwin faithfully performed, building the 
fortress of Bruges, and ruling Flanders manfully for 
many years. And our Alfred, though, we may be sure, 
much shocked in early years at the doings of his young 
stepmother, must have shared the fate of the rest of his 
sex at last, for we find him giving his daughter Elfrida 
as wife to Baldwin, second Count of Flanders, the 
eldest son of Judith. From this Baldwin the Second, 
and Alfred's daughter Elfrida, the Conqueror's wife 
Matilda came, through whom our sovereigns trace their 
descent from Alfred the Great. And so the figure 
of fair, frail, fascinating Judith flits across English 
history in those old years, the woman w T ho next to 
his own mother must have had most influence on 
our great king. 



CHAPTER IV. 



CNIHTHOOD. 



" Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? 
Even by ruling himself after Thy word." 

The question of questions this, at the most critical 
time in his life for every child of Adam who ever 
grew to manhood on the face of our planet ; and so 
far as human experience has yet gone, the answer 
of answers. Other answers have been, indeed, forth- 
coming at all times, and never surely in greater 
number or stranger guise than at the present time : 
" Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?" 
Even by ruling himself in the faith "that human 
life will become more beautiful and more noble in 
the future than in the past." This will be found 
enough " to stimulate the forces of the will, and 
purify the soul from base passion," urge, with a zeal 
and ability of which every Christian must desire to 
speak with deep respect, more than one school of 
our nineteenth century moralists. 

"Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his 
way?" Even by ruling himself on the faith, "that 
it is probable that God exists, and that death is not 
the end of life;" or again, "that this is the only 



CNIHTHOOD. 



45 



world of which we have any knowledge at all." 
Either of these creeds, says the philosopher of the 
clubs, if held distinctly as a dogma and consistently 
acted on, will be found " capable of producing prac- 
tical results on an astonishing scale/' So one would 
think, but scarcely in the direction of personal holi- 
ness, or energy. Meantime, the answer of the Hebrew 
psalmist, 3,000 years old, or thereabouts, has gone 
straight to the heart of many generations, and I take 
it will scarcely care to make way for any solution 
likely to occur to modern science or philosophy. 
Yes, he who has the word of the living God to rule 
himself by — who can fall back on the strength of Him 
who has had the victory over the world, the flesh, 
and the devil — may even in this strange disjointed 
time of ours carry his manhood pure and unsullied 
through the death-grips to which he must come with 
"the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the 
pride of life." He who will take the world, the flesh, 
and the devil by the throat in his own strength, will 
find them shrewd wrestlers. Well for him if he 
escape with the stain of the falls which he is too 
sure to get, and can rise up still a man, though 
beaten and shamed, to meet the same foes • in new 
shapes in his later years. New shapes, and ever more 
vile, as the years run on. u Three sorts of men my 
soul hateth," says the son of Sirach, " a poor man 
that is proud, a rich man that is a liar, and an old 
adulterer that doateth." 

We may believe the Gospel history to be a fable, but 
who amongst us can deny the fact, that each son of 



46 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

man has to go forth into the wilderness — for us, " the 
wilderness of the wide world in an atheistic century " — 
and there do battle with the tempter as soon as the 
whisper has come in his ear : " Thou too art a man ; 
eat freely. All these things will I give thee." 

Amongst the Anglo-Saxons the period between 
childhood and manhood was called " cnihthood," the 
word " cniht " signifying both a youth and a servant. 
The living connexion between cnihthood and service 
was never more faithfully illustrated than by the 
young Saxon prince, though he had already lost the 
father to whom alone on earth his service was due. 
The young nobles of Wessex of Alfred's time for the 
most part learnt to run, leap, wrestle, and hunt, and 
were much given to horse-racing and the use of arms ; 
but beyond this, we know from Alfred himself, that 
neither their fathers or they had much care to go. 
Doubtless, however, here and there were clerical men, 
like Bishop Wilfrid in the previous century, to whom 
nobles sent their sons to be taught by him ; and when 
full-grown, "to be dedicated to God if they should 
choose it, or otherwise to be presented to the king 
in vfull armour." It is not probable that Alfred ever 
had the advantage of such tuition, as he makes no 
mention of it himself. We do not know exactly 
how or when he learnt to read or write, -but the 
story of how he met the young man's foes in the hey- 
day of his youth and strength comes to us in Bishop 
Asser's life, precisely enough, though in the language 
and clothing of a far-off time, w T ith which we are little 
in sympathy. It seems better, however, to leave it 



CNIHTHOOD. 47 



as it stands. Any attempt to remove what we should 
call the miraculous element out of it would probably 
take away all life without rendering it the least more 
credible to readers of to-day. 

As he advanced through the years of infancy and 
youth, his form appeared more comely than those of 
his brothers, and in look, speech, and manners he was 
more graceful than they. He was already the darling 
of the people, who felt that in w r isdom and other 
qualities he surpassed all the royal race. Alfred then 
being a youth of this fair promise, while training him- 
self diligently in all such learning as he had the 
means of acquiring, and especially in his own mother 
tongue, and the poems and songs which formed the 
chief part of Anglo-Saxon literature, was not unmind- 
ful of the culture of his body, and was a zealous prac- 
tiser of hunting in all its branches, and hunted with 
great perseverance and success. Skill and good fortune 
in this art, as in all others, the good Bishop here adds, 
are amongst the gifts of God, and are given to men 
of this stamp, as we ourselves have often witnessed. 

But before all things he was wishful to strengthen 
his mind in the keeping of God's commandments ; 
and, finding that the carnal desires and proud and 
rebellious thoughts which the devil, who is ever 
jealous of the good, is apt to breed in the minds 
of the young, were likely to have the mastery 
of him, he used often to rise at cock-crow in the 
early mornings, and repairing to some church, or 
holy place, there cast himself before God in prayer 
that he might do nothing contrary to His holy 



4 8 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 



will. But finding himself still hard bested, he began 
at such times to pray as he lay prostrate before 
the altar, that God in His great mercy would 
strengthen his mind and will by some sickness, such 
as would be of use to him in the subduing of his 
body, but would not show itself outwardly or render 
him powerless or contemptible in worldly duties, or 
less able to benefit his people. For King Alfred from 
his earliest years held in great dread leprosy, and 
blindness, and every disease which would make a 
man useless or contemptible in the conduct of affairs. 
And when he had often and with much fervour 
prayed to this effect, it pleased God to afflict him with 
a very painful disease, which lay upon him with little 
respite until he was in his twentieth year. 

At this age he became betrothed to her who was 
afterwards his wife, Elswitha, the daughter of 
Ethelred, the Earl of the Gaini in Mercia, whom 
the English named Mucil, because he was great 
of body and old in wisdom. Alfred, then at that 
time being on a visit to Cornwall for the sake of 
hunting, turned aside from his sport, as his custom 
often was, to pray in a certain chapel in which was 
buried the body of St. Guerir. There he entreated 
God that He would exchange the sickness with 
which he had been up to that time afflicted for 
some other disease, which should in like manner not 
render him useless or contemptible. And so, finish- 
ing his prayers, he got up and rode away, and soon 
after perceived within himself that he was made 
whole of his old sickness. 



CNIHTHOOD. 49 

So his marriage was celebrated in Mercia, to 
which came great numbers of people, and there 
was feasting which lasted through the night as well 
as by day. In the midst of which revelry Alfred 
was attacked by sudden and violent pain, the cause 
of which neither they who were then present, nor 
indeed any physician in after years, could rightly 
ascertain. At the time, however, some believed that 
it was the malignant enchantment of some person 
amongst the guests, others that it was the special 
spite of the devil, others again that it was the old 
sickness come back on him, or a strange kind of fever. 
In any case from that day until his forty-fourth year, 
if not still later, he was subject to this same sickness, 
which frequently returned, giving him the most acute 
pain, and, as he thought, making him useless for every 
duty. But how far the King was from thinking rightly 
in this respect, those who read of the burdens that 
were laid on him, and the work which he accomplished, 
can best judge for themselves. 

We must return, however, to the death of Ethel- 
wulf, which happened, as we heard above, A.D. 858. 
That king, with a view, as he supposed, to prevent 
strife after his death, had induced the West Saxon 
witan to agree to the provisions of his will, and to 
sign it by some of their foremost men. These pro- 
visions were, that Ethelbald his eldest surviving son, 
who had rebelled against him, should remain king of 
Wessex, and, if he should die childless, should be 
succeeded by his two youngest brothers, Ethelred and 
Alfred, in succession; while Ethelbert, the second son, 

S.L. VIII. E 



50 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

should be king of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey, with no 
right of succession to the greater kingdom. Thus even 
in his death Ethelwulf was preparing trouble for his 
country, for the kingdom of Kent could not now have 
been separated from Wessex without war, nor was it 
likely that Ethelbert would accept his exclusion from 
the greater succession. His estates and other property 
the King divided between his children, providing that 
his lands should never lie fallow, and that one poor 
man in every ten, whether native or foreigner, of those 
who lived on them, should be maintained in meat, 
drink, and clothing by his successors for ever. 

From 858 then, after their father's death, Ethelred 
and Alfred lived in Kent with their brother Ethelbert 
until 860, when King Ethelbald died, and his widow 
Judith retired to France. Upon this event, had the 
younger brothers been self-seekers, or had either of 
them insisted on the right of succession, given to 
them by the will of their father, and sanctioned by 
the witan, the south of England would have seen wars 
of succession such as those which raged on the Conti- 
nent during that same century between the descend- 
ants of Charlemagne. Then Wessex and Kent must 
have fallen an easy prey to the pagan hosts which 
were already gathering for the onslaught, as happened 
in Northumbria and East Anglia. But at this juncture 
the royal race of Cerdic were free from such ambi- 
tions, and Ethelred and Alfred allowed Ethelbert to 
ascend the throne of Wessex, and continued to live 
with him. He died in 866, after a peaceful and 
honourable reign of nearly six years, and there was 



CNIHTHOOD. 51 



grief throughout the land, say the chroniclers, when 
he was buried in Sherborne minster. Nevertheless 
we cannot but note that in 864 he had allowed a 
pagan army to establish themselves in the Isle of 
Thanet without opposition, and in 860 had left the 
glory of avenging the plunder of Winchester by 
another roving band to Osric alderman of Hants, 
and Ethelwulf alderman of Berks. It was high time 
that the sceptre of the West Saxons should pass 
into stronger hands, for within a few months of the 
accession of Ethelred the great host under Hinguar 
and Hubba landed in East Anglia, which was never 
afterwards cast out of the realm, and for so many 
years taxed the whole strength of the southern king- 
doms under the leading of England's greatest king. 

Alfred was now Crown Prince, next in succession 
to the throne under the will of his father, which had 
been accepted by the witan. Under the same will he 
was also entitled in possession to his share of certain 
royal domains and treasures, which were thereby 
devised to Ethelbald, Ethelred, and him, in joint 
tenancy. He had already waived his right to any 
present share of this heritage once, on the accession 
of Ethelbert to the West Saxon kingdom. Now that 
the brother nearest to himself in age has succeeded 
he applies for a partition, and is refused. The whole 
of these transactions are so characteristic of the 
times and the man, that we must pause yet for a few 
moments over them. We have his own careful, and 
transparently truthful, account of them, in the recitals 
to his will, which run as follow. 

E2 



52 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 



"X,, Alfred, by God's grace king, and with the 
counsel of Ethelred Archbishop, and all the witan of 
the West Saxons witness, have considered about my 
soul's health, and about my inheritance, that God 
and my elders gave me, and about that inheritance 
which King Ethelwulf my father bequeathed to us 
three brothers, Ethelbald, Ethelred, and me, and 
which of us soever were longest liver that he should 
take it all. But when it came to pass that Ethelbald 
died, Ethelred and I, with the witness of all the 
West Saxon witan, our part did give in trust to 
Ethelbert the king our brother, on the condition 
that he should deliver it back to us as entire as it 
then was when we did make it over to him ; as he 
afterwards did (on his death) both that which he took 
by our joint gift and that which he himself had 
acquired. When it happened that Ethelred succeeded, 
then prayed I him before all our nobles that we two 
the inheritance might divide, and he would give to 
me my share. Then said he to me that he might not 
easily divide, for that he had at many different times 
formerly taken possession. And he said, both of our 
joint property and what he had acquired, that after 
his days he would give it to no man rather than to 
me, and I was therewith at that time well satisfied. 5 ' 

Why should a young prince otherwise occupied in 
the training of his immortal soul, and wrestlings 
with principalities and powers, take more account 
now of this inheritance ? Let it rest then as it is. 

"But.it came to pass that we were all despoiled by 
the heathen folk. Then we consulted concerning our 



CNIHTHOOD. 53 



children (Alfred by this time having married) that 
they would need some support to be given by us out 
of these estates as to us had been given. Then were 
we in council at Swinbeorg, when we two declared in 
the presence of the West Saxon nobles, that which- 
soever of us two should live longest should give to 
the other's children those lands which we ourselves 
had acquired, and those that Ethelwulf the king gave 
to us two while Ethelbald was living, except those 
which he gave to us three brothers. And we gave 
each to other security that the longest liver of us 
should take land and treasure and all the possessions 
of the other, except that part which either of us to 
his children should bequeath." 

In which sad tangle, which no man can unravel, 
the inheritance question rests at the death of King 
Ethelred in 871. There is the agreement indeed 
but what does it mean ? Alfred will not himself 
decide it. Here is the Great Council of the West 
Saxons. Let them say whether or no he can deal 
with this part of the royal inheritance, or to whom it 
of right belongs. w So when the King died," Alfred 
goes on, "no man brought to me title-deed, or 
evidence that it was to be otherwise than as we had 
so agreed before witnesses, yet heard I of inheritance 
suits. Wherefore brought I Ethelwulf the king's 
will before our council at Langadene, and they read 
it before all the West Saxon witan. And after it was 
read, then prayed I them all for my love — and gave 
to them my troth that I never would bear ill-will to 
none of them that should speak right — that none of 



54 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

them would neglect, for my love nor for my fear, to 
declare the common right, lest any man should say 
that I had excluded my kinsfolk whether old or 
young. And they then all for right pronounced, and 
declared that they could conceive no more rightful 
title nor hear of such in a title-deed ; and they said, 
' It is all delivered into thy hand, wherefore thou 
mayest bequeath and give it, either to a kinsman, or 
a stranger as may seem best to thee/ " 

This council at Langadene was held most pro- 
bably between the years 880 and 885, after Alfred 
had triumphed over all his enemies, and was deep 
already in his great social reforms. Under the sanc- 
tion there given he distributes this part of the royal 
inheritance, as well as his own property, by his will, 
which we shall have to consider in its own place. 

Thus then we get a second result of Alfred's 
cnihthood. We have already seen him curbing suc- 
cessfully the unruly passions of his youth ; paying 
willingly with health and bodily comfort to win that 
victory, since it can be won by him at no lower 
price. At the death of Ethelbald, and again of 
Ethelbert, after he had grown to manhood and must 
have been conscious of his power to manage lands and 
men, we now find him standing aside at once, and 
allowing two elder brothers in succession to keep his 
share of the joint heritage. He at least will give no 
example in the highest places of the realm of strife 
about visible things, will make any sacrifice of lands 
or goods so that he maintain peace and brotherly 
love in his own family. 



CNIHTHOOD. 55 



The tempter we may see has led this son of man 
into the wilderness without much success. The 
whisper "Take and eat" has met with a brave 
" Depart, Satan," from these royal lips. England 
may now look hopefully for true kingship and leading 
from him who has already learned to rule like a king 
in the temple of his own body and spirit. 

We may notice for a third point that in these 
years of his cnihthood Alfred has gathered together 
the services of the hours (celebrationes korarum) y with 
many of the Psalms — whether written by himself or 
not we cannot tell, probably not — but forming a small 
manual, or handbook, which he always carries in his 
bosom, and which will be found helpful to him in 
many days of sore trial. 

With such garniture then of one kind or another, 
gathered together in these early years, the young 
crown prince stands loyally by the side of the young 
king his brother, looking from their western home 
over an England already growing dark under the 
shadow of a tremendous storm. When it bursts, 
will it spend itself on these Northumbrian and East 
Anglian coasts and kingdoms, or shall we too feel its 
rage ? These must have been anxious thoughts for 
the young prince, questionings to which the answer 
was becoming month by month plainer and clearer 
at the time of his marriage. Within some six 
weeks of that ceremony he was already in arms in 
Mercia. Before the birth of his first child he was him- 
self king, and nine pitched battles had been fought in 
his own kingdom of Wessex under his leadership. 



CHAPTER V. 



THE DANE. 



" The day of the Lord cometh, it is nigh at hand ; a day of darkness 
and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the 
morning spread upon the mountains : a great people and a strong; there 
hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it, even to 
the years of many generations." 

A strange atmosphere of wild legend surrounds 
the group of tribes who, from the shores of the 
Baltic and the great Scandinavian peninsula, as 
well as from Denmark, in this ninth century fell 
upon all coasts of England ; at first swooping 
down in small marauding bands in the summer 
months, plundering towns, villages, and homesteads, 
and disappearing before the winter storms ; then 
coming in armies headed by kings and jarls, settling 
in large districts of the north and east, and from 
thence carrying fire and swoj-d through the heart of 
Mercia and Wessex. They are of the same stock 
with the West Saxons and Jutes themselves, and 
-speak a kindred language. Their kings also claim 
descent from Woden. The description of Tacitus 
applies to them as well as to their brother sea- 
rovers, who, four centuries before them, came over 



THE DANE. 57 



under Hengist and Horsa, inflicting precisely that 
which their descendants are now to endure, and 
driving the old British stock back mile by mile from 
the Kentish and Sussex downs to the Welsh moun- 
tains and the Land's End. 

Three centuries earlier, the Arthur of British legend 
had fought the Saxons in the very districts which 
a yet greater English king is now to hold against 
as terrible odds. These Northmen, Scandinavians, 
Danes, like the Saxons, elect their kings and 
chiefs, noble lineage and valour being the qualifi- 
cations for the kingly office. Affairs of moment 
ar© decided by general assemblies, in which the 
kings speak first, and the rest in turn as they are 
eminent for valour, birth, and understanding. Dis- 
approval is signified by a murmur, approval by the 
clashing of spears, for they come to their assemblies 
armed. The king surrounds himself by a brave 
and numerous band of companions in arms, his 
glory in peace and safety in war. It is dishonour- 
able to the king not to be first in fight, it is 
infamy for his intimate comrades and followers to 
survive him in battle. But the power of the king is 
not unlimited ; he sets an example of valour rather 
than commands. The chiefs have different ranks 
according to his judgment, and amongst his followers 
there is the keenest emulation who shall stand fore- 
most in his favour. They would rather serve for 
wounds than plough and wait the harvest, for it seems 
to them the part of a dastard to earn by the sweat 
of the brow what may be gained by the glory of the 



58 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

sword. Their women, too, are held in the same high 
estimation as those of the Saxons, and for the most 
part accompany them in their wanderings, and share 
their dangers and glories. 

To such a political and social organization we must 
add a religious faith second to none invented by man, 
not excepting that of Mahomet, in its power of con- 
secrating valour, and inspiring men with contempt of 
pain and death. The idea of a universal father, 
the creator of sky and earth, and of mankind, the 
governor of all kingdoms, though found in the Edda, 
has by this time faded out from the popular faith. 
Woden is now the chief figure in that weird my- 
thology — "wuctan," the power of movement, soon 
changing into the god of battles, " who giveth victory, 
who reanimates warriors, who nameth those who are 
to be slain." This Woden had been an inspired 
teacher, as well as a conqueror, giving runes to these 
wild Northmen, a Scandinavian alphabet, and songs 
of battle. A teacher as well as a soldier, he had 
led them from the shores of the Black Sea (so 
their traditions told) to the fiords of Norway, the 
far shores of Iceland. Departed from amongst his 
people, he has drawn their hearts after him, and 
lives there above in Asgard, the garden of the gods. 
Here in his own great hall, Valhalla, the hall of 
Odin, he dwells; in that hall of heroes, into which 
the " Valkyrs," or a choosers of the slain," shall lead 
the brave, even into the presence of Odin, there 
to feast with him. This reward for the brave who 
die in battle ; but for the coward ? He shall be 



THE DANE. 59 



thrust down into the realm of Hela, death, whence 
he shall fall to Nifhleim, oblivion, extinction, which 
is below in the ninth world. ^ 

Round the central figure of Woden cluster other 
gods. Chief of these, Balder the sun god, white, 
beautiful, benignant, who dies young — and Thor the 
thunder god, with terrible smiting hammer and awful 
brows, engaged mainly in expeditions into Jotun 
land, a chaotic world, the residence of the giants or 
devils, " frost/' " fire," " tempest," and the like. Thor's 
attendant is " Thealfi," manual labour. In his ex- 
ploits the thunder god is like Samson, full of 
unwieldy strength, simplicity, rough humour. 

There is a tree of life too in that unseen world, 
Igdrasil, with its roots in Hela, the kingdom of death, 
at the foot of which sit the three " Nomas," the past, 
present, and future. Also the Scalds have a vision of 
supreme struggle of the gods and Jotuns, a day of 
the Lord, as the old Hebrew seers would call it, 
ending in a " Twilight of the gods," a sinking down 
of the created universe, with gods, Jotuns, and in- 
exorable Time herself, into darkness — from which 
shall there not in due course issue a new heaven 
and new earth, in w T hich a higher god and supreme 
justice shall at last reign ? 

Under the sway of such a faith, and of their lust 
of wild adventure, pressed from behind by teeming 
tribes ever pushing westward, lured on in front by the 
settled coasts of England and France, rich already in 
flocks and herds, in village, town, and abbey, each 
standing in the midst of fertile and well-tilled districts, 



60 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

but surrounded by forests well adapted to cover the 
ambush or retreat of invaders, the sea-kings and their 
followers swept out year after year from the bays 
of Denmark and the fiords of Norway, crossing the 
narrow northern seas in their light half-decked boats, 
to spoil, and slay, and revel in "the play of swords, 
the clash of spear and buckler," " when the hard iron 
sings upon the high helmets." In the death-hymn 
of Regner Lodbrog are some thirty stanzas — each one 
beginning, " We fought with swords," and describing 
the joy of some particular battle — which trace the 
career of the old Norseman from the distant Goth- 
land, up the Vistula, across Europe, in the North- 
umbrian land, the isles of the south, the Irish plains, 
till he makes an end : " When in the Scottish gulfs, 
I gained large spoils for the wolves. We fought with 
swords. This fills me still with joy, because I know 
a banquet is preparing by the father of the gods. 
Soon in the hall of Odin we shall drink mead out of 
the skulls of our foes. A brave man shrinks not at 
death ; I shall utter no repining words as I approach 
the palace of the gods. . . . The fates are come for 
me. Odin hath sent them from the habitation of the 
gods. I shall quaff full goblets among the gods. The 
hours of my life are numbered ; I die laughing." Such 
are the last words which the Scalds put into the 
mouth of the grim old sea-king, dying in torment 
in the serpent-tower of Ella, to whom tradition points 
as the father of the two leaders of the first great 
Danish invasion of England, the terrible wave which 
broke on the East Anglian shores in the year that 



THE DANE. 61 



Ethelred came to the throne. The death-hymn may 
be of uncertain origin, but at least it is a genuine and 
characteristic Bersirkir hymn ; and if Lodbrog were 
not the father of Hinguar and Hubba, they would 
seem, at any rate, to have been filled with his spirit. 

In 851 a band of Danes had first wintered in Eng- 
land, in the Isle of Thanet, and again in 855 another 
band wintered in the Isle of Sheppey ; but these were 
small bodies, attempting no permanent settlement, 
and easily dislodged. This invasion towards the end 
of 866 was of a far different character. A great army 
of the Pagans, the Saxon Chronicle records, now came 
over and took up winter quarters among the East 
Angles, who would seem at first to have made some 
kind of truce with them, and even to have furnished 
them with provisions and horses. At any rate, for 
the moment the Pagans made no attack on East 
Anglia, but early in 867 crossed the Humber and 
swooped down upon York city, which they surprised 
and took. 

There was civil war already in Northumbria at this 
time between Osbert the king, and Ella, a man not of 
royal blood, whom the Northumbrians had placed on 
the throne. Osbert, it is said, had outraged the wife 
of one of his nobles, Bruern Brocard by name, who 
received him hospitably while her husband was away 
at the coast on the king's business, watching for 
pirates. Whatever the cause, the civil feud raged so 
fiercely that the Danes were in the very heart of the 
kingdom before a blow was struck in its defence. Now 
at last, urged by the Northumbrian nobles* Osbert 



62 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

and Ella made peace, joined their forces, and without 
delay marched on York. The pagan army fell back 
before them even to the city walls, which the Christians 
at once tried to storm, and were partially successful. 
A desperate fight took place within and without the 
walls, ending in the utter defeat of the Christians and 
the deaths of Osbert, Ella, and a crowd of nobles. 
The remainder of the people made peace with the 
army, whose descendants are probably still living in 
and round the city of York. At least their mark is 
there to this day in the street of Goodramgate, called 
after Gudrum or Goodrum, whom Hinguar and Hubba 
left as their deputy to hold down the city and district. 

For the remainder of this year the army lay quiet, 
exhausted no doubt by that York fight, and waiting 
for reinforcements from Denmark. At this juncture, 
while the black cloud is gathering in the north, 
Ealstan, the famous warrior-bishop of Sherborne, goes 
to his rest in peace, leaving the young king and 
prince, the grandsons of his old liege lord, Egbert, 
who had picked him out fifty years before, with no 
wiser counsellor or braver soldier to stand by them in 
this hour of need. 

Early in 868 Alfred journeys into Mercia to wed 
Elswitha, the daughter of Ethelred Mucil, as we 
have already heard. Scarcely can he have reached 
Wessex and installed his wife at Wantage, or else- 
where, when messengers in hot haste summon the 
king and him to the help of their brother-in-law, 
Buhred, king of Mercia. The pagan army is upon 
him. Stealing over swiftly and secretly, " like foxes,'' 



THE DANE. 63 



from Northumbria, through forest and waste, as is 
their wont, they have struck at once at a vital part 
of another Saxon kingdom, and stormed Nottingham 
town, which they now hold. Ethelred and Alfred 
were soon before Nottingham with a force drawn 
from all parts of Wessex, eager for battle. But the 
wily pagan holds him fast in castle and town, and 
the walls are high and strong. The king and prince 
watch in vain outside. Soon their troops, hastily 
mustered, must get back for harvest. They march 
south reluctantly, not, however, before a peace is 
made between their brother-in-law and the Pagans, 
under which the latter return to York, where they 
lie quiet for the whole of 869. 

But this year also brought its own troubles to 
afflicted England — a great famine and mortality 
amongst men, and a pest among cattle. Such times 
can allow small leisure to a young prince who carries 
in his bosom that handbook in which the Psalms and 
services of the hours are written, and who has resolved 
for his part to be a true shepherd of his people, a 
king indeed, but one who will rule under the eye, 
and in the name of the King of kings. 

The next year (870) is one full of sorrow, and of 
glory, for Christian England. It witnesses the utter 
destruction of another Saxon kingdom, adds one 
worthy English name to the calendar of saints, 
several to the roll of our heroes still remembered, 
and a whole people to the glorious list of those who 
have died sword in hand and steadfast to the last, 
for faith and fatherland. 



64 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

In the late summer, one division of the pagan army 
leaving York take to their ships, and, crossing the 
Humber, fall on Lindesey (now Lincolnshire), and 
plunder and burn the monastery of Bardeney. The 
young Algar, alderman of the shire, the friend of 
Ethelred and Alfred, springs to arms, and calls out 
the brave men of the Fens. They flock to his standard, 
the rich cloisters of the district sending their full 
quota of fighting men under lay brother Toly, of 
Croyland Abbey. On the 2 1st of September, St. 
Maurice's Day, the Christian host fell on the Pagans 
at Kesteven, and in that first fight three kings were 
slain, and Algar pursued the Pagans to the entrance 
of their camp. 

But help for the vanquished was at hand. The 
other division of the Pagans, in which were now five 
kings— Guthrum, Bagsac, Oskytal, Halfdene, and 
Amund— and the jarls Hinguar and Hubba, Frene, 
and the two Sidrocs, marching over land through 
Mercia, arrive on the field. Algar, Toly, and their 
comrades, now fearfully overmatched, receive the 
Holy Sacrament in the early morning, and stand 
there to win or die. Algar commands the centre of 
the Christian battle, Toly and Morcar the right wing, 
Osgot of Lindesey and Harding of Rehal (we cannot 
spare the names of one of them) the left. The Pagans, 
having buried their slain kings, hurl themselves on the 
Christian host, and through the long day Algar and 
his men stand together and beat back wave after wave 
of the sea-kings' onslaught. At last the Christians, 
deceived by a feigned retreat, break their solid ranks 



THE DANE. 65 



and pursue. Then comes the end. The Pagans 
turn, stand, and surrounded and outnumbered, Algar, 
Toly, and their men die where they had fought, and 
a handful of youths only escape of all the Christian 
host to carry the fearful news to the monks of 
Croyland. The pursuers are on their track. Croy- 
land is burnt and pillaged before the treasures can 
be carried to the forests. 

Four days later Medeshamsted (Peterborough) 
shares the same fate ; soon afterwards Huntingdon 
and Ely ; and in all those fair shires scarcely man, 
woman, or child remain to haunt like ghosts the 
homes which had been theirs for generations. The 
pagan host, leaving the desolate land a wilderness 
behind them, turn south-east and make their head- 
quarters at Thetford. Edmund, king of the East 
Anglians, a just and righteous ruler, very dear to his 
people — no warrior, it would seem, hitherto, but one 
who can at least do a brave leader's part — he now 
arms and fights fiercely with the Pagans, and is slain 
by them, with the greater part of his followers, near 
the village of Hoxne. Tradition says that the king 
was taken alive, and, refusing to play the renegade, 
was tied to a tree, and shot to death, after undergoing 
dreadful tortures. His head was struck off, and the 
corpse left for wolf or eagle, while his murderers 
fell on town and village, and minster and abbey, 
throughout all that was left of East Anglia, so that 
the few people who survived fled to the forests for 
shelter. 

Nevertheless a monk or two froip Croyland,,. and 

S.L. VIII. p 



66 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

other faithful men of the eastern counties, managed to 
steal out of their hiding-places and take up the slain 
body and severed head of their good King Edmund. 
" They embalmed him with myrrh and sweet spices, 
with love, pity, and all high and awful thoughts, con- 
secrating him with a very storm of melodious, adoring 
admiration and sun-dyed showers of tears ; joyfully, 
yet with awe (as all deep joy has something of the 
awful in it), commemorating his noble deeds and god- 
like walk and conversation while on earth. Till at 
length the very Pope and cardinals at Rome were 
forced to hear of it; and they summing up as correctly 
as they well could with 'Advocatus Diaboli' pleadings, 
and their other forms of process, the general verdict 
of mankind declared : that he had in very fact led a 
hero's life in this world, and being now gone, was 
gon.e, as they conceived, to God above, and reaping 
his reward there." So King Edmund was canonized, 
and his body entombed in St. Edmund's shrine, where 
a splendid abbey in due time rose over it, some poor 
fragments of which may still be seen in the town of 
Bury St. Edmunds. 

Alas for East Anglia ! there was no one to take 
Edmund's place, to play, the part for the eastern 
counties which Alfred played for Wessex a few years 
later. Edwold, the brother of Edmund, on whom the 
duty lay, "seeing that a. hard lot had fallen on himself 
and his brother, retired to the monastery of Carnelia 
in Dorsetshire, near a clear well which St. Augustine 
had formerly brought out of the earth by prayer to 
baptize the people in. And ^ there Jhe led a hermit's 



THE DANE. 67 



life on bread and water." So East Anglia remained 
for years a heathen kingdom, with Guthrum, the most 
powerful and latest comer of the pagan leaders, for 
king. In the dread pause of the few winter months of 
870-71 we may fancy the brave young king of the West 
Saxons and the Etheling Alfred warning alderman 
and earl, bishop and mitred abbot, and thegn, through- 
out Wessex, that their turn had now come. There 
was nothing to delay the invaders for an hour between 
Thetford and the Thames. Their ships w T ould be in 
the river, and their horsemen on the north bank, in the 
earty spring. Then the last issue would have to be 
tried between Christian and Pagan, Saxon and Dane, 
for stakes of which not even Alfred could estimate 
the worth to England and the world. 



F 2 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE FIRST WAVE. 

11 Blessed be the Lord my strength, who teacheth my hands to war, and my 
fingers to fight" 

Christmas 870-71 must have been a time of intense 
anxiety to the whole Christian people of Wessex. 
The young King had indeed shown himself already 
a prompt and energetic leader in his march to 
Nottingham at the call of his brother-in-law. But, un- 
less perhaps in the skirmishes outside that beleaguered 
town in the autumn of 869, he had never seen blows 
struck in earnest"; had never led and rallied men 
finder the tremendous onset of the Bersirkir. Alfred, 
though already the, darling of the people, had even 
less experience than Ethelred, who was at least five 
years older. He was still a very young man, skilled 
in the chase, and inured to danger and hardship, so 
far as hunting and manly exercises of all kinds could 
make him so, but as much a novice in actual battle as 
David when he- stood before Saul, ruddy and of a fair 
complexion, but ready in the strength of his God, who 
had delivered him from the paw of the lion and the 
paw of the bear, to go up with his sling and stone and 
fight with the Bersirkir of his day. And this gene- 



THE FIRST WA VE. 69 

ration of the West Saxons, who were now to meet 
in supreme life-and-death conflict such kings as 
Guthrum and Bagsac,suchjarls as Hinguar and Sidroc, 
" the ancient one of evil days/' and their followers — 
tried warriors from their youth up— were much in the 
same case as their young leaders. The last battle of 
any mark in Wessex had been fought eleven years 
back, in 860, when a pagan host "came up from the 
sea" and stormed and sacked Winchester. Osric alder- 
man of Hampshire, and Ethelwulf alderman of Berk- 
shire, as we have already heard, caught them on their 
return to their ships laden with spoil, and after a hard 
fight utterly routed them, rescued all the spoil, and 
had possession of the place of death. Of this Alder- 
man Ethelwulf we shall hear again speedily, but Osric 
would seem to have died since those Winchester days. 
At any rate w r e have no mention of him, or indeed of 
any other known leader except Ethelwulf, in all that 
storm of battle which now sweeps down on the rich 
kingdom, and its stolid but indomitable sons. 

In these days when our wise generation, weighed 
down with wealth and its handmaid vices on the one 
hand, and exhilarated by some tiny steps it has 
managed to make on the threshold of physical know- 
ledge of various kinds on the other, would seem to be 
bent on ignoring its Creator and God altogether — or 
at least of utterly denying that He has revealed, or 
is revealing Himself, unless it be through the laws of 
Nature — one of the commonest demurrers to Chris- 
tianity has been, that it is no faith for fighters, for the 
men who have to do the roughest and hardest work 



70 



LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 



for the world. I fear that some sections of Christians 
h,xc been too ready to allow this demurrer, and fall 
back on the Quaker doctrines; admitting thereby 
that such " Gospel of the kingdom of heaven " as they 
can for their part heartily believe in, and live up to, 
is after all only a poor cash-gospel, and cannot bear 
the dust and dint, the glare and horror, of battle-fields. 
Those of us who hold that man was sent into this 
earth for the express purpose of fighting— of uncom- 
promising and unending fighting with body, intellect, 
spirit, against whomsoever or whatsoever causeth or 
maketh a lie, and therefore, alas ! too often against 
his brother man— would, of course, have to give up 
Christianity if this were true ; nay, if they did not 
believe that precisely the contrary of this is true, that 
Christ can call them as plainly in the drum beating 
to battle, as in the bell calling to prayer, can and will 
be as surely with them in the shock of angry hosts as 
in the gathering before the altar. But without enter- 
ing further into the great controversy here, I would 
ask readers fairly and calmly to consider whether all 
the greatest fighting that has been done in the world 
has not been done by men who believed, and showed 
by their lives that they believed, they had a direct 
call from God to do it, and that He was present with 
them in their work. And further (as I cheerfully own 
that this test would tell as much in favour of Mahomet 
as of Cromwell. Gustavus Adolphus, John Brown) 
whether, on the whole, Christian nations have not 
proved stronger in battle than any others. I would 
not press the point unfairly, or overlook such facts as 



THE FIRST WAVE, 71 

the rooting out of the British by these very West 
Saxons when the latter were Pagans ; all I maintain 
is, that from the time of which we are speaking to the 
last great civil war in America, faith in the constant 
presence of God in and around them has been the 
support of those who have shown the strongest hearts, 
the least love of ease and life, the least fear of death 
and pain. 

But we are wandering from the West Saxon king- 
dom and our hero in those early days of the year 
871. The Christians were not kept long in suspense. 
As soon as the frost had broken up, Danish galleys 
were beating up the Thames, and Danish horsemen 
stealing their way across Hertfordshire and Bucking- 
hamshire. The kings Bagsac, Halfdene, and Guth- 
rum, jarls Osbern, Frene, Harald, the two Sidrocs, 
and probably Hinguar, led the pagan host in this their 
greatest enterprise on British soil. Swiftly, as was 
their wont, they struck at a vital point, and seizing 
the delta which is formed by the junction of the 
Thames and Kennet, close to the royal burgh of 
Reading, threw up earthworks, and entrenched them- 
selves there. Whether they also took the town at 
this time is not clear from the Chronicles, but most 
likely they did, and in any case here they had all 
they wanted in the shape of a stronghold, a fortified 
camp in which their spoils and the women and 
wounded could be left, and by which their ships could 
lie. Any reader who has travelled on the Great 
Western Railway has crossed the very spot, a few 
hundred yards east of the station. The present 



LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREA T. 



racecourse must have been within the Danish 
lines. 

Two days sufficed for rest and the first necessary 
works, and on the third a large part of the army started 
on a plundering and exploring expedition under two 
of their jarls. At Englefield, a village still bearing 
the same name, some six miles due west of Reading, 
in the vale of Kennet — where the present county 
member lives in a house which Queen Bess visited 
more than once — they came across Alderman Ethel- 
wulf, with such of the Berkshire men as he had been 
able hastily to gather in these few days. The Chris- 
tians were much fewer in number, but the brave 
Ethelwulf led them straight to the attack with the 
words, "They be more than we, but fear them not. 
Our Captain, Christ, is braver than they." The news 
of that first encounter must have cheered the King 
and Alfred, who were busy gathering their forces 
further west, for Ethelwulf slew one of the jarls and 
drove the plunderers back to their entrenchments 
with a great slaughter. The Saxon Chronicle says 
that one of the Sidrocs was the jarl slain at Engle- 
field ; but this could scarcely be, as the same authority, 
supported by Asser, gives both the Sidrocs on the 
death-roll of Ashdown. Four days afterwards Ethel- 
red and Alfred march suddenly to Reading with a 
large force, and surprise and cut to pieces a number 
of the Pagans who were outside their entrenchments. 
Then, while the Saxons were preparing to encamp, 
kings and jarls rushed out on them with their whole 
power, and the tide of battle rolled backwards and 



THE FIRST WA VE. 73 

forwards over the low meadows outside the royal 
burgh, victory inclining now to one side, now to the 
other. In the end, after great slaughter on both sides, 
the Saxons gave way, and the young king and his 
brother fell back from Reading, leaving the body of 
the brave and faithful Ethelwulf among the dead. 
It is said that the Pagans dragged it to Derby. What 
matter ! The strong soul had done its work, and 
gone to its reward. Small need of tombs for the 
bodies of the brave and faithful — of such men the 
whole land and the hearts of its people is the tomb. 

A few lines in a later chronicler have here deceived 
even so acute and accurate a writer as Dr. Pauli, who 
says that Ethelred and Alfred were pursued from 
Reading field as far as Twyford, and crossed the 
Thames at a ford near Windsor, which was unknown 
to the Danes. Had this really been so, they must 
have gone due east, away from all their resources, 
and, the battle having been fought on the south bank 
of the Thames, must have crossed into Mercia, 
leaving the whole of Wessex open to the pagan host. 
Dr. Pauli, and the authorities he has followed, going 
on this hypothesis, are at a loss as to the scene of 
the next great battle, that of Ascesdune, not knowing 
apparently that there is a district of that name in 
Berkshire, at the western end of the county, on the 
summit of the chalk hills which run through the 
county as a backbone from Goring to Swindon. 
Tradition agrees with the description of the field in 
the oldest chroniclers in marking this Ashdown as the 
spot where the great fight was fought. Ethelred and 



74 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREA T. 



Alfred then fell back with their broken bands along 
the south bank of the Thames westward, until they 
struck the hills, and then still back along the ancient 
track known as the Ridgeway, past Ilsley and past the 
royal burgh of Wantage, Alfred's birthplace, from 
which they probably drew the reinforcements which 
justified them in turning to bay on the fourth day 
after the disaster at Reading. The Pagans were on 
their track with their whole host (except King 
Guthrum and his men), in two divisions ; one com- 
manded by the two kings Bagsac and Halfdene, the 
other by the jarls. Ethelred, on perceiving this 
disposition of the enemy, divided his forces, taking 
command himself of the division which was to act 
against the kings, and giving the other to Alfred. 
Each side threw up hasty earthworks, the remains of 
which may be seen to this day on at least three spots 
of the downs, the highest point of which is White 
Horse Hill ; and all of which, according to old maps, 
are included in the district known as Ashdown. 
That highest point had been seized by the Pagans, 
and here the opposing hosts rested by their watch- 
fires through the cold March night. We may fancy 
from the one camp the song of Regner Lodbrog 
beguiling the night watches: — "We fought' with 
swords ! Young men should march up to the conflict 
of arms. Man should meet man and never give 
ground. In this hath ever stood the nobleness of the 
warrior. He who aspires to the love of his mistress 
should be dauntless in the clash of arms." In the 
other camp we know that by one fire lay a youth who 



THE FIRST WAVE. 75 

carried in his bosom the Psalms of David written out 
in a fair hand, which he was wont to read in all 
intervals of rest. Here too is a son of Odin of the 
pure royal lineage, who will come to the clash of 
arms on the morrow in the strength of u the Lord of 
Hosts, who teacheth his hands to war and his 
fingers to fight." 

At early dawn the hosts are on foot. Let Alfred's 
old friend tell the tale in his own words : — " Alfred, 
we have been told by some who were there and would 
not lie, marched up promptly with his men to give 
battle. But King Ethelred stayed long time in his 
tent at prayer, hearing the mass, and sent word that 
he would not leave it till the priest had done, or 
abandon God's help for that of man. And he did so 
too, which afterwards availed him much, as we shall 
declare more fully. Now the Christians had deter- 
mined that King Ethelred with his men should fight 
the two pagan kings, and that Alfred his brother with 
his men should take the chance of war against the earls. 
Things being so arranged, the King remained long time 
in prayer, while the Pagans pressed on swiftly to the 
fight. Then Alfred, though holding the lower com- 
mand, could no longer support the onslaught of the 
enemy without retreating, or charging upon them 
without waiting for his brother." A moment of fear- 
ful anxiety this, we may note, for the young prince. 
But he has a strong heart for such a crisis ; and, dread- 
ing the effect on his men of one step backwards, puts 
himself at their head and leads them up the slope 
against the whole pagan host " with the rush of a wild 



7 6 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 



boar" (aprino more)* " For he too relied on the help of 
God," Asser goes on, and also we see had already learnt 
something from the Reading disaster, for "he formed 
his men in a dense phalanx to meet the foe," which 
was never broken in that long fight. Mass being over, 
Ethelred comes up to the help of his brother, and the 
battle raged along the whole hill-side. " But here I 
must inform those who are ignorant of the fact, that 
the field of battle was not equal for both sides. The 
Pagans occupied the higher ground, and the Chris- 
tians came up from below. There was also in that 
place a single stunted thorn tree, which we have seen 
with our own eyes. Round this tree the opposing 
hosts came together with loud shouts from all sides, the 
one party to pursue their wicked course, the other to 
fight for their lives, their wives and children, and their 
country. And, when both sides had fought long and 
bravely, at last the Pagans by God's judgment gave 
way, being no longer able to abide the Christian on- 
slaught, and after losing great part of their army 
broke in shameful flight. One of their two kings and 
five jarls were there slain, together with many 
thousand Pagans, who covered with their bodies the 
whole plain of Ashdown. There fell in that fight 
King Bagsac (by the hand, as some say, of Ethelred) ; 
Earl Sidroc the elder and Earl Sidroc the younger, 
Earl Osbern, Earl Frene, and Earl Harald. And all 
the pagan host pursued its flight, not only until night, 
but through the next day, even until they reached the 
stronghold from which they had come forth. The 
Christians followed, slaying all they could reach until 




King Alfred at the Battle of Ashdoion.—W 7 f>. 



THE FIRST WA VE. 77 

dark." Ethelward the chronicler, the great-grandson 
of Ethelred, adds, "Neither before or since wss ever 
such slaughter known since the Saxons first gained 
England by their arms." 

The whole story does not take more than ten lines 
in the chroniclers, but conceive what that short ten, 
or twenty minutes at most, must have been in the 
life of Alfred. A youth for the first time in inde- 
pendent command, with the memory of the mishap 
four days back at Reading as his only experience in 
war, opposed to two hostile armies each as numerous 
as his own, flushed with their late victory, and led by 
the most terrible warriors of the time — he has to 
decide there, peremptorily, the fate of England hang- 
ing on his judgment, whether he will give ground and 
wait for his brother, or himself attack. Stand still 
he cannot, as the enemy swarm on the slopes above, 
and partially covered by the formation of the ground, 
already ply his men with missiles to which they 
can make no useful reply. After that Ashdown 
dawn every future supreme moment and crisis of his 
eventful life must have come on him as child's-play. 
" Bagsac and the two Sidrocs, at the top of the down, 
with double my numbers, already overlapping my 
flanks — Ethelred still at mass — dare I go up at 
them ? In the name of God and St. Cuthbert,. yes." 
He who could so answer, and thereupon himself lead 
up the hill in wild-boar fashion (aprino more), ha&here- 
after no question he need fear in the domain of war. 
That moment has hardened his nerve to flint, and 
his judgment, amid the clash of arms, to steel. 



78 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

Through all those weary years of battle and mis- 
fortune that follow, there is in Alfred no sign of 
indecision or faint-heartedness. 

Against any enemy but the Danes, such a victory 
as that of Ashdown would have been decisive for a 
generation, but the hopeless nature of the war which 
the West Saxons had now to maintain cannot be 
better illustrated than by the events which imme- 
diately follow. The scattered remains of the pagan 
army came back into the Reading entrenchments in 
the next few days, and there seem to have found 
Guthrum and his troops, with new reinforcements of 
plunderers from East Anglia and over the sea, upon 
whom they rallied at once. In a fortnight they are 
again ready for a foray, and, avoiding the chalk hills, 
the scene of their late defeat, a large band of them 
strike across the Kennet, and so away south-west, 
through new country into Hampshire. Ethelred and 
Alfred hastening down after them, catch them at 
Basing in a strong position, before which the Saxons 
are worsted, but, as is significantly added, the Pagans 
get no spoil in the expedition. One more battle the 
brave Ethelred was destined, about two months later, 
to fight for his people. It is said to have happened 
at a place called Merton, but could scarcely have 
been at the village in Surrey of that name, as is 
usually supposed. Guthrum would never have struck 
back through a country already pillaged, nor, had he 
done so, were Ethelred and Alfred likely to have 
followed, leaving the entrenched camp at Reading 
in their rear, and their own homes open to the 



THE FIRST WAVE. 79 

garrison. However, at the place called Merton by 
the chroniclers, wherever it may be, the two brothers 
fought for the last time together against their un- 
wearied foes. Large reinforcements, "an innumerable 
summer army," as Ethelward calls them, had come 
to the Danish head-quarters at Reading in the last 
few weeks. They had now regained their old supe- 
riority in numbers, and fought again in two divisions* 
Through the greater part of the day the Saxons had 
the better, but towards evening fortune changed, and 
at last, after great loss on both sides, the Pagan 
/'had possession of the place of death." Edmund, 
the new bishop of Sherborne, successor to the gallant 
Ealstan, was here slain, and Ethelred himself is said 
to have been mortally wounded. At any rate he 
died almost immediately after the battle, and was 
buried by Alfred, with kingly honours, in Wimborne 
Minster. Sherborne, the burial-place of the family 
of Cerdic, had for the moment no bishop, was closed 
perhaps, may even have been in pagan hands. And 
thus, at the age of twenty-three, Alfred ascended the 
throne of his fathers, which was tottering as it seemed 
to its fall. 



CHAPTER VII. 

ALFRED ON THE THRONE. 

" Lord my God, Thou hast made Thy servant kin^ ' and I am bu, 
a little child : I know not how to go out or to come in." 

The throne of the West Saxons was not an inhe- 
ritance to be desired in the year 871, when Alfred 
succeeded his gallant brother. It descended on 
him without comment or ceremony, as a matter of 
course. There was not even an assembly of the 
witan to declare the succession, as in ordinary 
times. With Guthrum and Hinguar in their en- 
trenched camp at the confluence of the Thames and 
Kennet, and fresh bands of marauders sailing up the 
former river, and constantly swelling the ranks of the 
pagan army during these summer months, there was 
neither time nor heart amongst the wise men of the 
West Saxons for strict adherence to the letter of the 
constitution, however venerable. We have seen, too, 
that the succession had already been settled by the 
Great Council, when they formally accepted the pro- 
visions of Ethelwulfs will, that his three sons should 
succeed to the exclusion of the children of any one 
of them. 



ALFRED ON THE THRONE. 81 

The idea of strict hereditary succession has taken 
so strong a hold of us English in later times, that 
it is necessary constantly to insist that our old 
English kingship was elective. Alfred's title was 
based on election ; and so little was the idea of usur- 
pation, or of any wrong done to the two infant sons 
of Ethelred, connected with his accession, that even the 
lineal descendant of one of those sons, in his chro- 
nicle of that eventful year, does not pause to notice 
the fact that Ethelred left children. He is writing to 
his " beloved cousin Matilda," to instruct her in the 
things which he had received from ancient traditions, 
" of the history of our race down to these two kings 
from whom we have our origin." " The fourth son of 
Ethelwulf," he writes, " was Ethelred, who, after the 
death of Ethelbert, succeeded to the kingdom, and 
was also my grandfather's grandfather. The fifth was 
Alfred, who succeeded after all the others to the whole 
sovereignty, and was your grandfather's grandfather." 
And so passes on to the next facts, without a word 
as to the claims of his own lineal ancestor, though 
he had paused in his narrative at this point for 
the special purpose of introducing a little family 
episode. 

This king has indeed been anointed by the Pope, 
named by his royal father and brother, and elected by 
his people; may not we add, taking Mr. Carlyle's 
test, that he had^ been also elected for them in 
heaven ? If it will not hold in his case, we must 
indeed throw up this idea of election altogether, and 
allow that Heaven has nothing to say to the business. 

S.L. VIII. Q 



82 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

But we who value our England as we have it will 
not just now dispute about where or how Alfred got 
elected, or from whence the right came to him to 
stand forth in this dark hour, a shepherd who will 
give his life for the sheep, a monarch who has to 
tread the winepress alone. Enough for us that he, 
and no other, was found there ; and so, that we have 
our own country, and not another kind of country 
altogether in which to live. 

When Alfred had buried his brother in the cloisters 
of Wimborne Minster, and had time to look out from 
his Dorsetshire resting-place, and take stock of the 
immediate prospects and work which lay before him, 
we can well believe that those historians are right who 
have told us that for the moment he lost heart and 
hope, and suffered himself to doubt whether God 
would by his hand deliver the afflicted nation from its 
terrible straits. In the eight pitched battles which 
we find by the Saxon Chronicle (Asser giving seven 
only) had already been fought with the pagan army, 
the flower of the youth of these parts of the West 
Saxon kingdom must have fallen. The other Teu- 
tonic kingdoms of the island, of which he was over- 
lord, and so bound to defend, had ceased to exist 
except in name, or lay utterly powerless, like Mercia, 
awaiting their doom. Kent, Sussex, and Surrey, 
which were now an integral part of the royal inhe- 
ritance of his own family, were at the mercy of his 
enemies, and he without a hope of striking a blow for 
them. London had been pillaged, and was in ruins. 
Even in Wessex proper, Berkshire and Hampshire, 



ALFRED ON THE THRONE. 83 



with parts of Wilts and Dorset, had been crossed and 
recrossed by marauding bands, in whose track only- 
smoking ruins and dead bodies were found. "The 
land was as the garden of Eden before them, and be- 
hind them a desolate wilderness. ,, These bands were 
at this very moment on foot, striking into new districts 
further to the south-west than they had yet reached. 
If the rich lands of Somersetshire and Devonshire, 
and the yet unplundered parts of Wilts and Dorset, 
are to be saved, it must be by prompt and decisive 
fighting, and it is time for a king to be in the field. 
But it is a month from his brother's death before 
Alfred can gather men enough round his standard 
to take the field openly. Even then, when he fights, 
it is " almost against his will," for his ranks are sadly 
thin, and the whole pagan army are before him, at 
Wilton near Salisbury. The action would seem 
to have been brought on by the impetuosity of 
Alfred's own men, whose spirit was still unbroken, 
and their confidence in their young king enthusiastic. 
There was a long and fierce fight as usual, during the 
earlier part of which the Saxons had the advantage, 
though greatly outnumbered. But again we get 
glimpses of the old trap of a feigned flight and am- 
buscade, into which they fell, and so again lose 
" possession of the place of death," the ultimate test 
of victory. " This year," says the Saxon Chronicle, 
"nine general battles were fought against the army 
in the kingdom south of the Thames; besides which, 
Alfred the king's brother, and single aldermen and 
king's thanes, oftentimes made attacks on them, which 

G 2 



84 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

were not counted ; and within the year one king and 
nine jarls were slain." Wilton was the last of these 
general actions, and not long afterwards, probably in 
the autumn, Alfred made peace with the Pagans, 
on condition that they should quit Wessex at once. 
They were probably allowed to carry off whatever 
spoils they may have been able to accumulate in their 
Reading camp, but I can find no authority for be- 
lieving that Alfred fell into the fatal and humiliating 
mistake of either paying them anything, or giving 
hostages, or promising tribute. There are constant 
notices of such payments in the chroniclers when any 
such were actually made, as, for instance, in the case 
of Mercia in the following year ; so, in the absence of 
positive affirmative evidence, I am not prepared to 
believe that Guthrum and his swarm of pirates were 
bought out of Wessex by Alfred in the first year of his 
reign. It seems far more likely that they had had 
more desperate fighting, and less plunder, than suited 
them in those eight or nine months since they broke 
up their winter quarters at Thetford, and were glad 
of peace for the present. This young king, who, as 
crown prince, led the West Saxons up the slopes at 
Ashdown, when Bagsac, the two Sidrocs, and the rest 
were killed, and who has very much their own way 
of fighting— going into the clash of arms, "when the 
hard steel rings upon the high helmets/' and "the 
beasts of prey have ample spoil," like a veritable 
child of Odin— is clearly one whom it is best to 
let alone, at any rate so long as easy plunder and 
rich lands are to be found elsewhere, without such 



ALFRED ON THE THRONE. 85 

poison-mad fighting for every herd of cattle, and 
rood of ground. Indeed I think the careful reader 
may trace from the date of Ashdown a decided un- 
willingness on the part of the Danes to meet Alfred, 
except when they could catch him at disastrous odds. 
They succeeded indeed for a time in overrunning 
almost the whole of his kingdom, in driving him an 
exile for a few wretched weeks to the shelter of his 
own forests ; but whenever he was once fairly in the 
field, they preferred taking refuge in strong places, 
and offering treaties and hostages, to the actual 
arbitrament of battle. 

So the pagan army quitted Reading, and wintered 
in 872 in the neighbourhood of London, at which 
place they receive proposals from Buhred, king of 
the Mercians, Alfred's brother-in-law, and for a money 
payment pass him and his people contemptuously by 
for the time, making some kind of treaty of peace 
with them, and go northward into what has now 
become their own country. They winter in Lincoln- 
shire, gathering fresh strength during 873 from the 
never-failing sources of supply across the narrow seas. 
Again, however, in this year of ominous rest they renew 
their sham peace with poor Buhred and his Mercians, 
who thus manage to tide it over another winter. In 
874, however, their time has come. In the spring, the 
pagan army under the three kings, Guthrum, Oskytal, 
and Amund, burst into Mercia. In this one only of 
the English Teutonic kingdoms they find neither 
fighting nor suffering hero to cross their way, and 
leave behind for a thousand years the memory of a 



S6 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 



noble end, cut out there in some half-dozen lines of 
an old chronicler, but full of life and inspiration to 
this day for all Englishmen. Here we have neither 
a pious Algar, or lay brother Toly, calmly taking 
their last sacrament at sunbreak, within hearing of the 
pagan rites over their fallen king; nor Alderman Ethel- 
wulf with his faith in the captaincy of Christ ; nor 
King Edmund, " gentle landlord," and slow in battle, 
but with the constancy that can brave all torture, if 
the will of God be so ; still less a king who carries the 
Psalms of David in his bosom under his armour, 
and will fight nine pitched battles in a year, whose 
presence lifts the hearts of men, and nerves their 
arms till they cease to reckon odds. With no man 
to lead them, what can these poor Mercians do? The 
whole country is overrun, and reduced under pagan 
rule without a blow struck, so far as we know, and 
within the year. This poor Buhred, titular king of 
the Mercians, who has made belief to rule this 
English kingdom these twenty-two years — who in 
his time has marched with his father-in-law Ethelwulf 
across North Wales — has beleaguered Nottingham 
with his brothers-in-law, Ethelred and Alfred, six 
years back, not without show of manhood — sees for 
his part nothing for it under such circumstances but 
to get away as swiftly as possible, as many so-called 
kings have done before him and since. The West 
Saxon court is no place for him, quite other views 
of kingship prevailing in those parts. So the poor 
Buhred breaks away from his anchors, leaving his 
wife Ethelswitha even, in his haste, to take refuge 



ALFRED ON THE THRONE. 87 



with her brother ; or is it that the heart of the daughter 
of the race of Cerdic swells against leaving the land 
which her sires had won, the people they had planted 
there, in the moment of sorest need ? In any case 
Buhred drifts away alone across into France, and so 
towards the winter to Rome. There he dies at once, 
about Christmas time 874, of shame and sorrow 
probably, or of a broken heart as we say ; at any 
rate having this kingly gift left in him, that he cannot 
live and look on the ruin of his people, as St. 
Edmund's brother Edwold is doing in these same 
years, "near a clear well at Carnelia, in Dorsetshire/' 
doing the hermit business there on bread and water. 

The English in Rome bury away poor Buhred, with 
all the honours, in the church of St. Mary's, to which 
the English schools rebuilt by his father-in-law Ethel- 
wulf were attached. Ethelswitha visited, or started 
to visit, the tomb years later, we are told, in 888, 
when Mercia had risen to new life under her great 
brother's rule. Through these same months Guthrum, 
Oskytal, and the rest, are wintering at Repton, 
after destroying there the cloister where the kingly 
line of Mercia lie ; disturbing perhaps the bones of 
the great Offa, whom Charlemagne had to treat as 
an equal. 

Neither of the pagan kings are inclined at this 
time to settle in Mercia ; so, casting about what 
to do with it, they light on " a certain foolish man," 
a king's thane, one Ceolwulf, and set him up as 
a sort of King Popinjay. From this Ceolwulf they 
take hostages for the payment of yearly tribute 



88 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

(to be wrung out of these poor Mercians on pain 
of dethronement), and for the surrender of the 
kingdom to them on whatever day they would 
have it back again. Foolish king's thanes, turned 
into King Popinjays by Pagans, and left to play at. 
government on such terms, are not pleasant or profit- 
able objects in such times as these of 1,000 years 
since — or indeed in any times for the matter of that. 
So let us finish with Ceolwulf, just noting that a year 
or two later his pagan lords seem to have found 
much of the spoil of monasteries, and the pickings 
of earl and churl, of folkland and bookland, sticking 
to his fingers, instead of finding its way to their 
coffers. This was far from their meaning in set- 
ting him up in the high places of Mercia. So they 
just strip him, and thrust him out, and he dies in 
beggary. 

This then is the winter's work of the great pagan 
army at Repton, Alfred watching them and their 
w r ork doubtless with keen eye — not without misgivings 
too at their numbers, swollen again to terrible pro- 
portions since they sailed away down Thames after 
Wilton fight. It will take years yet before the gaps 
in the fighting strength of Wessex, left by those nine 
pitched battles, and other smaller fights, will be filled 
by the crop of youths passing from childhood to man- 
hood. An anxious thought that for a young king. 

The Pagans, however, are not yet ready for another 
throw for Wessex ; and so when Mercia is sucked dry 
for the present^ and will no longer suitably maintain 
so great a host, they again sever. Halfdene, who 



ALFRED ON THE THRONE. 89 

would seem to have joined them recently, takes a 
large part of the army away with him northwards. 
Settling his head-quarters by the river Tyne, he sub- 
dues all the land, and " ofttimes spoils the Picts and 
the Strathclyde Britons." Amongst other holy places 
in those parts, Halfdene visits the Isle of Lindisfarne, 
hoping perhaps in his pagan soul not only to commit 
ordinary sacrilege in the holy places there, which is 
every-day work for the like of him, but even to lay 
impious hands on, and to treat with indignity, the 
remains of that holy man, St. Cuthbert, of whom 
we have already heard, and who has become in due 
course patron and guardian saint of hunters, and of 
that scourge of Pagans, Alfred the West Saxon. 
If such were his thought, he is disappointed of his 
sacrilege ; for Bishop Eardulf and Abbot Eadred — 
devout and strenuous persons — having timely warning 
of his approach, carry away the sainted body from 
Lindisfarne, and for nine years hide with it up and 
down the distracted northern counties, now here, now 
there, moving that sacred treasure from place to 
place until this bitterness is overpast, and holy persons 
and things, dead or living, are no longer in danger, 
and the bodies of saints may rest safely in fixed 
shrines ; the pagan armies and disorderly persons of 
all* kinds having been converted, or suppressed, in the 
meantime. For which good deed, the royal Alfred 
(in whose calendar St. Cuthbert, patron of huntsmen, 
stands very high) will surely w r armly befriend them 
hereafter, when he has settled his accounts with many 
persons and things. From the time of this incursion 



9o LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

of Halfdene, Northumbria may be considered once 
more a settled state ; but a Danish, not a Saxon one. 
The rest and greater part of the army, under 
Guthrum, Oskytal, and Amund, on leaving Repton, 
strike south-east, through what was Landlord Ed- 
mund's country, to Cambridge, where, in their usual 
heathen way, they pass the winter of 875. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



THE SECOND WAVE. 



The downfall, exile, and death of his brother-in-law 
in 874 must have warned Alfred, if he had any need 
of warning, that no treaty could bind these foemen, 
and that he had nothing to look for but the same 
measure as soon as the pagan leaders felt themselves 
strong enough to mete it out to him and Wessex. 
In the following year we accordingly find him on the 
alert, and taking action in a new direction. These 
heathen pirates, he sees, fight his people at terrible 
advantage by reason of their command of the sea. 
This enables them to choose their own point of 
attack, not only along the sea-coast, but up every 
river as far as their light galleys can swim ; to retreat 
unmolested, at their own time, whenever the fortune 
of war turns against them ; to bring reinforcements of 
men and supplies to the scene of action without fear 
of hindrance. His Saxons have long since given up 
their seafaring habits. They have become before all 
things an agricultural people, drawing almost every- 
thing they need from their own soil. The few foreign 
tastes they have are supplied by foreign traders. 
However, if Wessex is to be made safe, the sea- 



92 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

kings must be met on their own element ; and so, with 
what expenditure of patience and money, and encou- 
raging words and example we may easily conjecture, 
the young king gets together a small fleet, and him- 
self takes command of it. We have no clue to the 
point on the south coast where the admiral of twenty- 
five fights his first naval action, but know only that 
in the summer of 875 he is cruising with his fleet, and 
meets seven tall ships of the enemy. One of these he 
captures, and the rest make off after a hard fight — no 
small encouragement to the sailor king, who has thus 
for another year saved Saxon homesteads from devas- 
tation by fire and sword. 

The second wave of invasion had now at last 
gathered weight and volume enough, and broke on 
the king and people of the West Saxons. The year 
876 was still young when the whole pagan army, 
which had wintered at and about Cambridge, marched 
to their ships, and put to sea. Guthrum was in com- 
mand, with the other two kings, Anketel and Amund, 
as his lieutenants, under whom was a host as formid- 
able as that which had marched across Mercia through 
forest and waste, and sailed up the Thames five years 
before, to the assault of Reading. There must have 
been some few days of harassing suspense, for we 
cannot suppose that Alfred was not aware of the 
movements of his terrible foes. Probably his new 
fleet cruised off the south coast on the watch for 
them, and all up the Thames there were gloomy 
watchings, and forebodings of a repetition of the evil 
days of 871. But the suspense was soon over. Passing 



THE SECOND WAVE. 93 

by the Thames' mouth, and through Dover Straits, 
the pagan fleet sailed, and westward still past many 
tempting harbours and rivers 1 mouths, until they 
came off the coast of Dorsetshire. There they land 
at Wareham, and seize and fortify the neck of land 
between the rivers Frome and Piddle, on which stood, 
when they landed, a fortress of the West Saxons and 
a monastery of holy virgins. Fortress and monastery 
fell into the hands of the Danes, who set to work at 
once to throw up earthworks and otherwise fortify 
a space large enough to contain their army, and all 
spoil brought in by marauding bands from this 
hitherto unplundered country. This fortified camp 
was soon very strong, except on the western side, 
upon which Alfred shortly appeared with a body of 
horsemen, and such other troops as could be gathered 
hastily together. The detachments of the Pagans, 
who were already out pillaging the whole neighbour- 
hood, fell back apparently before him, concentrating 
on the Wareham camp. Before its outworks Alfred 
paused. He is too experienced a soldier now to risk 
at the outset of a campaign such a disaster as that 
which he and Ethelred had sustained in their attempt 
to assault the camp at Reading in 871. He is just 
strong enough to keep the Pagans within their lines, 
but has no margin to spare. So he sits down before 
the camp, but no battle is fought, neither he nor 
Guthrum caring to bring matters to that issue. Soon 
negotiations are commenced, and again a treaty is 
made. 

On this occasion Alfred would seem to have taken 



94 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

special pains to bind his faithless foe. All the holy 
relics which could be procured from holy places in 
the neighbourhood were brought together, that he 
himself and his people might set the example of 
pledging themselves in the most solemn manner 
known to Christian men. Then a holy ring or 
bracelet, smeared with the blood of beasts sacrificed 
to Woden, was placed on a heathen altar. Upon 
this Guthrum and his fellow kings and earls swore 
on behalf of the army that they would quit the King's 
country and give hostages. Such an oath had never 
been sworn by Danish leader on English soil before. 
It was the most solemn known to them. They would 
seem also to have sworn on Alfred's relics, as an 
extra proof of their sincerity for this once, and their 
hostages " from amongst the most renowned men in 
the army" were duly handed over. Alfred now 
relaxed his watch, even if he did not withdraw with 
the main body of his army, leaving his horse to see 
that the terms of the treaty were performed, and to 
watch the Wareham camp until the departure of the 
pagan host. But neither oath on sacred ring, nor 
the risk to their hostages, weighed with Guthrum 
and his followers when any advantage was to be 
gained by treachery. They steal out of the camp by 
night, surprise and murder the Saxon horsemen, 
seize the horses, and strike across the country, the 
mounted men leading, to Exeter, but leaving a suffi- 
cient garrison to hold Wareham for the present. 
They surprise and get possession of the western 
capital, and there settle down to pass the winter. 



THE SECOND WA VE, 95 

Rollo, fiercest of the vikings, is said by Asser to 
have passed the winter with them in their Exeter 
quarters on his way to Normandy ; but whether the 
great robber himself were here or not, it is certain 
that the channel swarmed with pirate fleets, who could 
put in to Wareham or Exeter at their discretion, and 
find a safe stronghold in either place from which to 
carry fire and sword through the unhappy country. 

Alfred had vainly endeavoured to overtake the 
march to Exeter in the autumn of 876, and failing in 
the pursuit, had disbanded his own troops as usual, 
allowing them to go to their homes until the spring. 
Before he could be afoot again in the spring of 877 
the main body of the Pagans at Exeter had made 
that city too strong for any attempt at assault, so 
the King and his troops could do no more than be- 
leaguer it on the land side, as he had done at Ware- 
ham. But Guthrum could laugh at all efforts of his 
great antagonist, and wait in confidence the sure dis- 
banding of the Saxon troops at harvest-time, so 
long as his ships held the sea. 

Supplies were soon running short in Exeter, but the 
Exe was open, and communications going on with 
Wareham. It is arranged that the camp there shall be 
broken up, and the whole garrison with their spoil 
shall join head-quarters. 120 Danish war-galleys are 
freighted, and beat down channel, but are baffled by 
adverse winds for nearly a month. They and all their 
supplies may be looked for any day in the Exe when 
the wind changes. Alfred, from his camp before Exeter, 
sends to his little fleet to put to sea. He cannot him- 



96 LIFE OF ALFRED TltE GREAT. 



self be with them as in their first action, for he knows 
well that Guthrum will seize the first moment of his 
absence to sally from Exeter, break the Saxon lines, 
and scatter his army in roving bands over Devonshire, 
on their way back to the eastern kingdom. The 
Saxon fleet puts out, manned itself, as some say, 
partly with sea-robbers, hired to fight their own 
people. However manned, it attacks bravely a por- 
tion of the pirates. But a mightier power than the 
fleet fought for Alfred at this crisis. First a dense 
fog, and then a great storm came on, bursting on the 
south coast with such fury that the Pagans lost no 
less than ioo of their chief ships off Swanage ; as 
mighty a deliverance perhaps for England— though 
the memory of it is nearly forgotten — as that which 
began in the same seas 700 years later, when Drake 
and the sea-kings of the 16th century were hanging 
on the rear of the Spanish Armada along the Devon 
and Dorset coasts, while the beacons blazed up all 
over England, and the whole nation flew to arms. 

The destruction of the fleet decided the fate of the 
siege of Exeter. Once more negotiations are opened 
by the Pagans ; once more Alfred, fearful of driving 
them to extremities, listens, treats, and finally accepts 
oaths and more hostages, acknowledging probably in 
sorrow to himself that he can for the moment do no 
better. And on this occasion Guthrum, being caught 
far from home, and without supplies or ships, " keeps 
the peace well/' moving as we conjecture, watched 
jealously by Alfred, on the shortest line across Devon 
and Somerset to some ford in the Avon, and so across 



THE SECOND WA VE. 97 

into Mercia, where he arrives during harvest, and 
billets his army on Ceolwulf, camping them for the 
winter about the city of Gloster. Here they run 
up huts for themselves, and make some pretence of 
permanent settlement on the Severn, dividing large 
tracts of land amongst those who cared to take them. 

The campaigns of 876-7 are generally looked upon 
as disastrous ones for the Saxon arms, but this view 
is certainly not supported by the chroniclers. It is 
true that both at Wareham and Exeter the Pagans 
broke new ground, and secured their positions, from 
which no doubt they did sore damage in the neigh- 
bouring districts ; but we can trace in these years 
none of the old ostentatious daring, and thirst for 
battle with Alfred. Whenever he appears the pirate 
bands draw back at once into their strongholds, and, 
exhausted as great part of Wessex must have been 
by the constant strain, the West Saxons show no 
signs yet of falling from their gallant king. If he can 
no longer collect in a week such an army as fought at 
Ashdown, he can still, without much delay, bring to 
his side a sufficient force to hem the Pagans in and 
keep them behind their ramparts. 

But the nature of the service was telling sadly on 
the resources of the kingdom south of the Thames. 
To the Saxons there came no new levies, while from 
the north and east of England, as well as from over 
the sea, Gujthrum was ever drawing to his standard 
wandering bands of sturdy Northmen. The most 
important of these reinforcements came to him from 
an unexpected quarter this autumn. We have not 

s.l. viii. II 



9 8 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

heard for some years of Hubba, the brother of Hin- 
guar, the younger of the two vikings who planned 
and led the first great invasion in 868. Perhaps he 
may have resented the arrival of Guthrum and other 
kings in the following years, to whom he had to give 
place. Whatever may have been the cause, he seems 
to have gone off on his own account, carrying with him 
the famous raven standard, to do his appointed work 
in these years on other coasts under its ominous shade. 

This " war-flag which they call raven " was a sacred 
object to the Northmen. When Hinguar and Hubba 
had heard of the death of their father, Regner Lodbrog, 
and had resolved to avenge him, while they were calling 
together their followers, their three sisters in one day 
wove for them this war-flag, in the midst of which was 
portrayed the figure of a raven. Whenever the flag 
went before them into battle, if they were to win the 
day the sacred raven would rouse itself and stretch its 
wings, but if defeat awaited them the flag would hang 
round its staff, and the bird remain motionless. This 
wonder had been proved in many a fight, so the wild 
Pagans who fought under the standard of Regner's 
children believed. It was a power in itself, and 
Hubba and a strong fleet were with it. 

They had appeared in the Bristol Channel in this 
autumn of 877, and had ruthlessly slaughtered and 
spoiled the people of South Wales. Here they propose 
to winter; but, as the country is wild mountain for the 
most part, and the people very poor, they will remain 
no longer than they can help. Already a large part 
of the army about Gloster are getting restless. The 



THE SECOND WA VE. 99 

story of their march from Devonshire, through rich 
districts of Wessex yet unplundered, goes round 
amongst the new-comers. Guthrum has no power, 
probably no will, to keep them to their oaths. In the 
early winter a joint attack is planned by him and 
Hubba on the West Saxon territory. By Christmas 
they are strong enough to take the field, and so in 
mid-winter, shortly after Twelfth-night, the camp at 
Gloster breaks up, and the army "stole away to 
Chippenham," recrossing the Avon once more into 
Wessex, under Guthrum. The fleet, after a short 
delay, cross to the Devonshire coast, under Hubba, in 
thirty war-ships. 

And now at last the courage of the West Saxons 
gives way. The surprise is complete. Wiltshire is at 
the mercy of the Pagans, who, occupying the royal 
burgh of Chippenham as head-quarters, overrun the 
whole district, drive many of the inhabitants " beyond 
the sea for want of the necessaries of life," and reduce 
to subjection all those that remain. Alfred is at his 
post, but for the moment can make no head against 
them. His own strong heart and trust in God are 
left him, and with them and a scanty band of followers 
he disappears into the forest of Selwood, which then 
stretched away from the confines of Wiltshire for 
thirty miles to the west. East Somerset, now one of 
the fairest and richest of English counties, was then 
for the most part thick wood and tangled swamp, but 
miserable as the lodging is it is welcome for the time 
to the King. In the first months of 878, Selwood 
Forest holds in its recesses the hope of England. 

H 2 



CHAPTER IX. 



ATHELNEY. 



"Behold a King shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in 
judgment. And a man shall be as an hiding-place from the wind, and 
a covert from the tempest ; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the 
shadow of a great rock in a weary land." 

At first sight it seems hard to account for the sudden 
and complete collapse of the West Saxon power in 
January 878. In the campaign of the last year Alfred 
had been successful on the whole, both by sea and 
land. He had cleared the soil of Wessex from the 
enemy, and had reduced the pagan leaders to sue 
humbly for terms, and to give whatever hostages he 
demanded. Yet three months later the simple cross- 
ing the Avon and taking of Chippenham is enough, 
if we can believe the chroniclers, to paralyse the 
whole kingdom, and to leave Alfred a fugitive, hiding 
in S el wood Forest, with a mere handful of followers 
and his own family. But there is no doubt or dis- 
crepancy in the accounts. The Saxon Chronicle says, 
in its short clear style, that the army stole away to 
Chippenham during mid-winter, after Twelfth-night, 
and sat down there ; " and many of the people they 
drove beyond the sea, and of the rest the greater part 



ATHELNEY. 101 



they subdued and forced to obey them, except King 
Alfred ; and he with a small band with difficulty 
retreated to the woods and the fastnesses of the 
moors." Asser and the rest merely expand this 
statement in one form or another, leaving the main 
facts — the complete success of the blow, and the 
inability of Alfred at the moment to ward it off, or 
return it, or recover from it — altogether unquestioned. 

Some writers have thought to account for it by 
transposing a passage from Brompton, narrating 
obscurely a battle at Chippenham, and another at a 
place called Abendune, in both of which Alfred is 
defeated. This occurs in Brompton in the year 871, 
and, being clearly out of place there, has been seized 
on to help out the difficulty in the year 878. 

But there does not appear to be the least ground 
for taking this liberty with Brompton's text, nor even, 
if there were, is he a sufficiently sound authority to 
rely upon for any fact which is not to be found in the 
Saxon Chronicle, or Asser. Nor indeed is there need 
of any such explanation when the facts come to be 
carefully examined. 

In the first place, this winter inroad on Chippenham 
was made at a time of year when even the vikings 
and their followers were usually at rest. Guthrum 
and his host fell upon the Wiltshire and Somersetshire 
men when they were quite unprepared, and before 
they had had time to hide away their wives and 
children or any provision of corn or beasts. Then the 
country was already exhausted. The Pagans, it is 
true, had not yet visited this part of Wessex, but the 



LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 



drain of men must have been felt here, in the last 
eight years, as well as further east and south. We 
remark, too, that these West Saxons are the nearest 
neighbours of the Mercians, amongst whom a con- 
siderable body of the Danes had been now settled for 
some years. Paganism was rife again at Gloster, and 
no great harm seemed to come of it. These pagan 
settlers, though insolent and overbearing, still lived 
side by side with the Saxon inhabitants ; did not 
attempt to drive them out or exterminate them ; left 
them some portion of their worldly goods. On the 
other hand, what hope is there in fighting against a 
foe who has nothing to lose but his life, whose numbers 
are inexhaustible. Might it not be better to make 
any terms with them, such, for instance, as our Mer- 
cian brethren have made ? This young king of ours 
cannot protect us, has spent all his treasure in former 
wars, has little indeed left but his name. Who is 
Alfred ? and what is the race of Cerdic ? Know ye 
not that we are consumed ? 

Here, for the first time, in 878, we find traces of 
this kind of demoralization and of disloyalty to their 
king and land on the part of a portion of his people; 
and the strong and patient soul of Alfred must have 
been wrung by an anguish such as he had not yet 
known, as he heard from his hiding-place of this 
apostasy. Here then our great king touches the 
lowest point in his history. So far as outward cir- 
cumstances go, humiliation can indeed hardly go further 
than this. Are we to believe the story that he had 
earned and prepared that humiliation for himself in 



ATHELNEY. 103 



those first few years of his reign between the autumn 
of 872, when the camp at Reading broke up, and the 
early spring of 876, when the pagan fleet appeared off 
Wareham ? The form in which this story comes down 
to us is in itself suspicious. It rests mainly on the 
authority of the " Life of St. Neot," a work of the 
next century, the author of which is not known ; but 
only thus much about him, that he was a monk bent 
on exalting the character and history of his saint, 
without much care at whose expense this was to be 
done. The passage in Asser, apparently confirming 
the statement, is regarded by all the best scholars as 
spurious, and indeed commences with a reference to 
the " Life of St. Neot," so that it could not possibly 
be of the same date as the rest of Asser's book, which 
was written during the King's lifetime. u The 
Almighty," so the anonymous author writes, "not 
only granted to this glorious king victories over his 
enemies, but also allowed him to be harassed by them, 
and weighed down by misfortunes and by the low 
estate of his followers, to the end that he might learn 
that there is one Lord of all things to w r hom every 
knee must bow, and in whose hand are the hearts of 
kings ; who puts down the mighty from their seat, and 
exalts them of low degree ; who suffers His servants, 
when they are at the height of good fortune, to be 
touched by the rod of adversity, that in their humility 
they may not despair of God's mercy, and in their 
prosperity may not boast of their honours, but may 
also know to whom they owe all they have. One 
may therefore believe that these misfortunes were 



I04 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT, 

brought on the King because in the beginning of his 
reign, when he was a youth and swayed by a youth's 
impulses, h©- would not listen to the petitions which 
his subjects made to him for help in their necessities, 
or for relief from their oppressors, but used to drive 
them from him and pay no heed to their requests. 
This conduct gave much pain to the holy man St. 
Neot, who was his relation, and often foretold to him 
in the spirit of prophecy that he would suffer great 
adversity on this account. But Alfred neither attended 
to the proof of the man of God, nor listened to his 
■soothsaying. Wherefore, seeing that a man's sins 
must be punished, either in this world or the next, 
the true and righteous Judge willed that his sin should 
iiot go unpunished in this world, to the end that He 
might spare him in the world to come. For this cause, 
therefore, King Alfred often fell into such great misery 
that sometimes none of his subjects knew where he 
was or what had become of him." 

So writes the monkish historian, upon whose state- 
ment one remarks, that in the only place where it 
can be tested it is not accurate. The one occasion on 
which Alfred fell into such misery that his subjects 
did not know where he was, was in this January of 
878. We know that for many years before his acces- 
sion he was anxiously bent on acquiring knowledge, 
and in disciplining himself for his work in life, what- 
ever it might be. Patience, humility, and utter for- 
getfulness of self, the true royal qualities, shine out 
through every word and act of his life wherever we 
can get at them. Indeed, I think no one can be 



ATNELNEY. 105 



familiar with the authentic records of his words and 
works and believe that he could ever have alienated 
his people by arrogance, or impatience, or super- 
ciliousness. His would seem to be rather one of those 
rare natures which march through life without haste 
and without faltering ; bearing all things, hoping all 
things, enduring all things, but never resting before 
the evil which is going on all round him, and of 
which he is conscious in his own soul. He may 
indeed have alienated some nobles and official per- 
sons in his kingdom, by curbing vigorously, and at 
once, the powers of the aldermen and reeves. In- 
deed, it is said, that in one of those years he hanged 
as many as forty- four reeves for unjust judgments, 
even for stretching the King's prerogative against 
suitors. No doubt, also, his demands on the people 
generally for military service, the building of ships, 
and restoring of fortified places, were burdensome, 
and may have caused some discontent. But there 
is no trustworthy evidence, that I have been able 
to find, of any disaffection, nor does it need the 
suggestion of any such cause to account for the 
events of the winter of 878. 

So much then for the monkish tradition of Alfred's 
arrogant youth and its results. It cannot be passed 
over, but must be read by the light of his later life 
and work, as we have it in minute detail. 

The King then disappears in January 878 from the 
eyes of Saxon and Northmen, and we must follow 
him, by such light as tradition throws upon these 
months, into the thickets and marshes of Selwood. It 



106 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

is at this point, as is natural enough, that romance 
lias been most busy, and it has become impossible 
to disentangle the actual facts from monkish legend 
and Saxon ballad. In happier times Alfred was in 
the habit himself of talking over the events of his 
wandering life pleasantly with his courtiers, and there 
is no reason to doubt that the foundation of most of 
the stories still current rests on those conversations of 
the truth-loving King, noted down by Bishop Asser 
and others. 

The best known of these is, of course, the story of 
the cakes. In the depths of the Saxon forests there 
were always a few neat-herds and swine-herds, scat- 
tered up and down, living in rough huts enough, we 
may be sure, and occupied with the care of the cattle 
and herds of their masters. Amongst these in Sel- 
wood was a neat-herd of the King, a faithful man, to 
whom the secret of Alfred's disguise was entrusted, 
and who kept it even from his wife. To this man's 
hut the King came one day alone, and, sitting him- 
self down by the burning logs on the hearth, began 
mending his bow and arrows. The neat-herd's wife 
had just finished her baking, and having other house- 
hold matters to attend to, confided her loaves to the 
King, a poor tired-looking body, who might be glad 
of the warmth, and could make himself useful by 
turning the batch, and so earn his share while she 
got on with other business. But Alfred worked away 
at his weapons, thinking of anything but the good 
housewife's batch of loaves, which in due course were 
not only done, but rapidly burning to a cinder. At 



ATHELNEY. 107 



this moment the neat-herd's wife comes back, and 
flying to the hearth to rescue the bread, cries out, 
" D'rat the man ! never to turn the loaves when you 
see them burning. I'ze warrant you ready enough 
to eat them when they're done." But besides the 
King's faithful neat-herd, whose name is not preserved, 
there are other churls in the forest, who must be 
Alfred's comrades just now if he will have any. And 
even here he has an eye for a good man, and will 
lose no opportunity to help one to the best of his 
power. Such an one he finds in a certain swine-herd 
called Denewulf, whom he gets to know, a thoughtful 
Saxon man, minding his charge there in the oak 
woods. The rough churl, or thrall, we know not 
which, has great capacity, as Alfred soon finds out, 
and desire to learn. So the King goes to work upon 
Denewulf under the oak trees, when the swine will 
let him, and is well satisfied with the results of his 
teaching and the progress of his pupil, as will appear 
in the sequel. 

But in those miserable days the commonest neces- 
saries of life were hard enough to come by for the 
King and his few companions, and for his wife and 
family, who soon joined him in the forest, even if 
they were not with him from the first. The poor 
foresters cannot maintain them, nor are this band 
of exiles the men to live on the poor. So Alfred 
and his comrades are soon out foraging on the 
borders of the forest, and getting what subsistence 
they can from the Pagans, or from the Christians 
who had submitted to their yoke. So we may 



io8 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 



imagine them dragging on life till near Easter, when 
a gleam of good news comes up from the west, to 
gladden the hearts, and strengthen the arms, of these 
poor men in the depths of Selwood. 

Soon after Gu thrum and the main body of the 
Pagans moved from Gloster, southwards, the Viking 
Hubba, as had been agreed, sailed with thirty ships 
of war from his winter quarters on the South Welsh 
coast, and landed in Devon. The news of the 
catastrophe at Chippenham, and of the disappearance 
of the King, was no doubt already known in the 
west ; and in the face of it Odda the alderman cannot 
gather strength to meet the Pagan in the open field. 
But he is a brave and true man, and will make no 
terms with the spoilers; so, with other faithful thegns 
of King Alfred and their followers, he throws him- 
self into a castle or fort called Cynwith, or Cynnit, 
there to abide whatever issue of this business God 
shall send them. Hubba, with the war-flag Raven, 
and a host laden with the spoil of rich Devon vales, 
appear in due course before the place. It is not 
strong naturally, and has only " walls in our own 
fashion," meaning probably rough earthworks. But 
there are resolute men behind them, and on the 
whole Hubba declines the assault, and sits down 
before the place. There is no spring of water, he 
hears, within the Saxon lines, and they are otherwise 
wholly unprepared for a siege. A few days will 
no doubt settle the matter, and the sword or slavery 
will be the portion of Odda and the rest of Alfred's 
men; meantime there is spoil enough in the camp 



ATHELNEY. 109 



from Devonshire homesteads, which brave men can 
revel in round the war-flag Raven, while they watch 
the Saxon ramparts. Odda, however, has quite other 
views than death from thirst, or surrender. Before 
any stress comes, early one morning, he and his 
whole force sally out over their earthworks, and from 
the first "cut down the pagans in great numbers:" 
840 warriors (some say 1,200), with Hubba himself, 
are slain before Cynnit fort ; the rest, few in number, 
escape to their ships. The war-flag Raven is left in 
the hands of Odda and the men of Devon. 

This is the news which comes to Alfred, Ethelnoth 
the alderman of Somerset, Denewulf the swine-herd, 
and the rest of the Selwood Forest group, some time 
before Easter. These men of Devonshire, it seems, 
are still staunch, and ready to peril their lives against 
the pagan. No doubt up and down Wessex, thrashed 
and trodden out as the nation is by this time, there 
are other good men and true, who will neither cross 
the sea, or the Welsh marches, or make terms with 
the Pagan ; some sprinkling of men who will yet 
set life at stake, for faith in Christ and love of 
England. If these can only be rallied, who can say 
what may follow? So, in the lengthening days of 
spring, council is held in Selwood, and there will 
have been Easter services in some chapel, or her- 
mitage, in the forest, or, at any rate, in some quiet 
glade. The "day of days" will surely have had 
its voice of hope for this poor remnant. Christ is 
risen and reigns ; and it is not in these heathen 
Danes, or in all the Northmen who ever sailed across 



no LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 



the sea, to put back His kingdom, or enslave those 
whom He has freed. 

The result is, that, far away from the eastern 
boundary of the forest, on a rising ground — hill it 
can scarcely be called — surrounded by dangerous 
marshes formed by the little rivers Thone and Parret, 
fordable only in summer, and even then dangerous 
to all who have not the secret, a small fortified 
camp is thrown up under Alfred's eye, by Ethelnoth 
and the Somersetshire men, where he can once again 
raise his standard. The spot has been chosen by the 
King with the utmost care, for it is his last throw. He 
names it the Etheling's eig or island, " Athelney." 
Probably his young son, the Etheling of England, 
is there amongst the first, with his mother and his 
grandmother Eadburgha, the widow of Ethelred 
Mucil, the venerable lady whom Asser saw in later 
years, and who has now no country but her daughter's. 
There are, as has been reckoned, some two acres of 
hard ground on the island, and around vast brakes of 
alder-bush, full of deer and other game. 

Here the Somersetshire men can keep up constant 
communication with him, and a small army grows 
together. They are soon strong enough to make 
forays into the open country, and in many skirmishes 
they cut off parties of the Pagans, and supplies. 
" For, even when overthrown and cast down," says 
Malmesbury, " Alfred had always to be fought with ; 
so then, when one would esteem him altogether worn 
down and broken, like a snake slipping from the 
hand of him who would grasp it, he would suddenly 



A THELNE Y. in 



flash out again from his hiding-places, rising up to 
smite his foes in the height of their insolent confidence, 
and never more hard to beat than after a flight.' , 

But it was still a trying life at Athelney. Followers 
came in slowly, and provender and supplies of all 
kinds are hard to wring from the Pagan, and harder 
still to take from Christian men. One day, while it 
was yet so cold that the water was still frozen, the 
Kings people had gone out " to get them fish or 
fowl, or some such purveyance as they sustained 
themselves withal." No one was left in the royal 
hut for the moment but himself, and his mother-in- 
law Eadburgha. The King (after his constant wont 
whensoever he had opportunity) was reading from the 
Psalms of David, out of the Manual which he carried 
always in his bosom. At this moment a poor man 
appeared at the door and begged for a morsel of 
bread " for Christ His sake." Whereupon the King, 
receiving the stranger as a brother, called to his 
mother-in-law to give him to eat. Eadburgha replied 
that there was but one loaf in their store, and a little 
wine in a pitcher, a provision wholly insufficient for 
his own family and people. But the King bade her 
nevertheless to give the stranger part of the last loaf, 
which she accordingly did. But when he had been 
served the stranger was no more seen, and the loaf 
remained whole, and the pitcher full to the brim. 
Alfred, meantime, had turned to his reading, over 
which he fell asleep, and dreamt that St. Cuthbert 
of Lindisfarne stood by him, and told him it was he 
who had been his guest, and that God had seen his 



112 



LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 



afflictions and those of his people, which were now 
about to end, in token whereof his people would 
return that day from their expedition with a great 
take of fish. The King awaking, and being much 
impressed with his dream, called to his mother-in-law 
and recounted it to her, who thereupon assured him 
that she too had been overcome with sleep, and had 
had the same dream. And while they yet talked 
together on what had happened so strangely to 
them, their servants come in, bringing fish enough, as 
it seemed to them, to have fed an army. 

The monkish legend goes on to tell that on the 
next morning the King crossed to the mainland in a 
boat, and wound his horn thrice, which drew to him 
before noon 500 men. What we may think of the 
story and the dream, as Sir John Spelman says, "is 
not here very much material," seeing that whether we 
deem it natural or supernatural, " the one as well as 
the other serves at God's appointment, by raising or 
dejecting of the mind with hopes or fears, to lead 
man to the resolution of those things whereof He has 
before ordained the event." 

Alfred, we may be sure, was ready to accept and 
be thankful for any help, let it come from whence it 
might, and soon after Easter it was becoming clear 
that the time is at hand for more than skirmishing 
expeditions. Through all the neighbouring counties 
word is spreading that their hero king is alive, and on 
foot again, and that there will be another chance 
for brave men ere long of meeting once more these 
scourges of the land, under his leading. 



ATHELNEY. 113 



A popular legend is found in the later chroniclers 
which relates that at this crisis of his fortunes, Alfred, 
not daring to rely on any evidence but that of his 
own senses as to the numbers, disposition, and disci- 
pline of the pagan army, assumed the garb of a 
minstrel, and with one attendant visited the camp of 
Guthrum. Here he stayed, "showing tricks and 
making sport," until he had penetrated to the King's 
tents, and learned all that he wished to know. After 
satisfying himself as to the chances of a sudden 
attack, he returns to Athelney, and, the time having 
come for a great effort, if his people will but make it, 
sends round messengers to the aldermen and king's 
thegns of neighbouring shires, giving them a tryst 
for the seventh week after Easter the second week 
in May. 



S.L. VIII. 



CHAPTER X. 



ETHANDUNE. 



il Unto whom Judas answered, It is no hard matter for many to be shut 

up in the hands of a few : and with the God of heaven it is all one to 

deliver with a great multitude or a small company. 
"For the victory of battle standeth not in the multitude of an host, but 

strength comethfrom heaven. 
" They come against us in much pride and iniquity, to destroy us, and 

our wives and children, and to spoil us. 
" But we fight for our lives and our laws." 

On or about the 12th of May, 878, King Alfred left 
his island in the great wood, and his wife and children 
and such household gods as he had gathered round 
him there, and came publicly forth amongst his people 
once more, riding to Egbert's stone (probably Brixton), 
on the east of Selwood, a distance of 26 miles. Here 
met him the men of the neighbouring shires — Odda, 
no doubt, with his men of Devonshire, full of courage 
and hope after their recent triumph ; the men of 
Somersetshire, under their brave and faithful Alder- 
man Ethelnoth ; and the men of Wilts and Hants, 
such of them at least as had not fled the country 
or made submission to the enemy. "And when 
they saw their king alive after such great tribula- 
tion, they received him, as he merited, with joy and 



ETHANDUNE. 115 



acclamation." The gathering had been so carefully 
planned by Alfred and the nobles who had been 
in conference or correspondence with him at Athelney, 
that the Saxon host was organized, and ready for 
immediate action, on the very day of muster. Whether 
Alfred had been his own spy we cannot tell, but it 
is plain that he knew well what was passing in the 
pagan camp, and how necessary swiftness and secrecy 
were to the success of his attack. 

Local traditions cannot be much relied upon for 
events which took place a thousand years ago, but 
where there is clearly nothing improbable in them 
they are at least worth mentioning. We may note, 
then, that according to Somersetshire tradition, first 
collected by Dr. Giles (himself a Somersetshire man, 
and one who, besides his Life of Alfred and other 
excellent works bearing on the time, is the author of 
the " Harmony of the Chroniclers," published by the 
Alfred Committee in 1852), the signal for the actual 
gathering of the West Saxons at Egbert's Stone was 
given by a beacon lighted on the top of Stourton Hill, 
where Alfred's Tower now stands. Such a beacon 
would be hidden from the Danes, who must have been 
encamped about Westbury, by the range of the Wilt- 
shire hills, while it would be visible to the west over 
the low country towards the Bristol Channel, and 
to the south far into Dorsetshire. 

Not an hour was lost by Alfred at the place of 
muster. The bands which came together there were 
composed of men well used to arms, each band under 
its own alderman, or reeve. The small army he had 

I 2 



Il6 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

himself been disciplining at Athelney, and training in 
skirmishes during the last few months, would form a 
reliable centre on which the rest would have to form 
as best they could. So after one day's halt he breaks 
up his camp at Egbert's Stone and marches to ^Eglea, 
now called Clay Hill, an important height, command- 
ing the vale to the north of Westbury, which the 
Danish army were now occupying. The day's march 
of the army would be a short five miles. Here the 
annals record that St. Neot, his kinsman, appeared 
to him, and promised that on the morrow his mis- 
fortunes would end. 

There are still traces of rude earthworks round the 
top of Clay Hill, which are said to have been thrown 
up by Alfred's army at this time. If there had been 
time for such a work, it would undoubtedly have been 
a wise step, as a fortified encampment here would 
have served Alfred in good stead in case of a re- 
verse. But the few hours during which the army 
halted on Clay Hill would have been quite too short 
time for such an undertaking, which, moreover, would 
have exhausted the troops. It is more likely that the 
earthworks, which are of the oldest type, similar to 
those at White Horse Hill, above Ashdown, were 
there long before Alfred's arrival in May 878. After 
resting one night on Clay Hill, Alfred led out his men 
in close order of battle against the pagan host, which 
lay at Ethandune. There has been much doubt 
amongst antiquaries as to the site of Ethandune, but 
Dr. Giles and others have at length established the 
claims of Edington, a village seven miles from Clay 



ETHANDUNE. 117 



Hill, on the north-east, to be the spot where the 
strength of the second wave of pagan invasion was 
utterly broken, and rolled back weak and helpless 
from the rock of the West Saxon kingdom. 

Sir John Spelman, relying apparently only on the 
authority of Nicholas Harpesfeld's " Ecclesiastical 
History of England," puts a speech into Alfred's 
mouth, which he is supposed to have delivered before 
the battle of Edington. He tells them that the great 
sufferings of the land had been yet far short of what 
their sins had deserved. That God had only dealt 
with them as a loving Father, and was now about to 
succour them, having already stricken their foe with 
fear and astonishment, and given him, on the other 
hand, much encouragement by dreams and otherwise. 
That they had to do with pirates and robbers, who 
had broken faith with them over and over again ; and 
the issue they had to try that day was, whether Christ's 
faith, or heathenism, was henceforth to be established 
in England. 

There is no trace of any such speech in the Saxon 
Chronicle or Asser, and the one reported does not 
ring like that of Judas Maccabeus. That Alfred's 
soul was on fire that morning, on finding himself once 
more at the head of a force he could rely on, and 
before the enemy he had met so often, we may be 
sure enough, but shall never know how the fire 
kindled into speech, if indeed it did so at all. In 
such supreme moments many of the strongest men 
have no word to say — keep all their heat within. 

Nor have we any clue to the numbers who fought 



nS LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

on cither side at Ethandune, or indeed in any of 
Alfred's battles. In the Chronicles there are only a 
few vague and general statements, from which little 
can be gathered. The most precise of them is that in 
the Saxon Chronicle, which gives 840 as the number 
of men who were slain, as we heard, with Hubba 
before Cynuit fort, in Devonshire, earlier in this same 
year. Such a death-roll, in an action in which only a 
small detachment of the pagan army was engaged, 
would lead to the conclusion that the armies were far 
larger than one would expect. On the other hand, it 
is difficult to imagine how any large bodies of men 
could find subsistence in a small country, which was 
the seat of so devastating a war, and in which so much 
land remained still unreclaimed. But whatever the 
power of either side amounted to we may be quite 
sure that it had been exerted to the utmost to bring 
as large a force as possible into line at Ethandune. 

Guthrum fought to protect Chippenham, his base of 
operations, some sixteen miles in his rear, and all the 
accumulated plunder of the busy months which had 
passed since Twelfth Night ; and it is clear that his 
men behaved with the most desperate gallantry. The 
fight began at noon (one chronicler says at sunrise, 
but the distance makes this impossible unless Alfred 
marched in the night), and lasted through the 
greater part of the day. Warned by many previous 
disasters, the Saxons never broke their close order, 
and so, though greatly outnumbered, hurled back 
again and again the onslaughts of the Northmen. 
At last Alfred and his Saxons prevailed, and smote 



ETHANDUNE. 119 



his pagan foes with a very great slaughter, and pur- 
sued them up to their fortified camp on Bratton Hill 
or Edge, into which the great body of the fugitives 
threw themselves. All who were left outside were 
slain, and the great spoil was all recovered. The 
camp may still be seen, called Bratton Castle, with its 
double ditches and deep trenches, and barrow in the 
midst sixty yards long, and its two entrances guarded 
by mounds. It contains more than twenty acres, and 
commands the whole country side. There can be 
little doubt that this camp, and not Chippenham, 
which is sixteen miles away, was the last refuge of 
Guthrum and the great Northern army on Saxon 
soil. 

So, in three days from the breaking up of his little 
camp at Athelney, Alfred was once more king of all 
England south of the Thames ; for this army of 
Pagans shut up within their earthworks on Bratton 
Edge are little better than a broken and disorderly 
rabble, with no supplies and no chance of succour 
from any quarter. Nevertheless he will make sure of 
them, and above all will guard jealously against any 
such mishap as that of 876, when they stole out of 
Wareham, murdered the horsemen he had left to 
watch them, and got away to Exeter. So Bratton 
Camp is strictly besieged by Alfred with his whole 
power. 

Guthrum, the destroyer, and now the King, of East 
Anglia, the strongest and ablest of all the Northmen 
who had ever landed in England, is now at last fairly 
in Alfred's power. At Reading, Wareham, Exeter, 



1 10 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 



he had always held a fortified camp, on a river easily 
navigable by the Danish war-ships, where he might 
look for speedy succour, or whence at the worst he 
might hope to escape to the sea. But now he, with 
the remains of his army, are shut up in an inland fort 
with no ships on the Avon, the nearest river, even if 
they could cut their way out and reach it, and no 
hopes of reinforcements over land. Halfdene is the 
nearest viking who might be called to the rescue, and 
he, in Northumbria, is far too distant. It is a matter 
of a few days only, for food runs short at once in the 
besieged camp. In former years, or against any other 
enemy, Guthrum would probably have preferred to 
sally out, and cut his way through the Saxon lines, or 
die sword in hand as a son of Odin should. Whether 
it were that the wild spirit in him is thoroughly 
broken for the time by the unexpected defeat at 
Ethandune, or that long residence in a Christian land 
and contact with Christian subjects have shaken his 
faith in his own gods, or that he has learnt to measure 
and appreciate the strength and nobleness of the man 
he had so often deceived, at any rate for the time 
Guthrum is subdued. At the end of fourteen days he 
sends to Alfred, suing humbly for terms of any kind ; 
offering on the part of the army as many hostages as 
may be required, without asking for any in return ; 
once again giving solemn pledges to quit Wessex for 
good ; and, above all, declaring his own readiness to 
receive baptism. If it had not been for the last pro- 
posal, we may doubt whether even Alfred would have 
allowed the ruthless foes with whom he and his people 



ETHANDUNE. 121 



had fought so often, and with such varying success, to 
escape now. Over and over again they had sworn to 
him, and broken their oaths the moment it suited 
their purpose ; had given hostages, and left them to 
their fate. In all English kingdoms they had now for 
ten years been destroying and pillaging the houses of 
God, and slaying even women and children. They 
had driven his sister's husband from the throne of 
Mercia, and had grievously tortured the martyr 
Edmund. If ever foe deserved no mercy, Guthr^m 
and his army were the men. 

When David smote the children of Moab, he 
" measured them with a line, casting them down to 
the ground ; even with two lines measured he to put 
to death, and with one full line to keep alive." When 
he took Rabbah of the children of Ammon, "he 
brought forth the people that were therein, and put 
them under saws and under harrows of iron and under 
axes of iron, and made them pass through the brick- 
kiln." That was the old Hebrew method, even under 
King David, and in the ninth century Christianity had 
as yet done little to soften the old heathen custom of 
i( woe to the vanquished." Charlemagne's prosely- 
tizing campaigns had been as merciless as Mahomet's. 
But there is about this English king a divine patience, 
the rarest of all virtues in those who are set in high 
places. He accepts Guthrum's proffered terms at 
once, rejoicing over the chance of adding these fierce 
heathen warriors to the Church of his Master, by an 
act of mercy which even they must feel. And so the 
remnant of the army are allowed to march out of their 



122 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

fortified camp, and to recross the Avon into Mercia, 
not quite five months after the day of their winter 
attack, and the seizing of Chippenham. The Northern 
army went away to Cirencester, where they stayed over 
the winter, and then returning into East Anglia settled 
down there, and Alfred and Wessex hear no more of 
them. Never was triumph more complete or better 
deserved ; and in all history there is no instance of 
more noble use of victory than this. The West Saxon 
army was not at once disbanded. Alfred led them 
back to Athelney, where he had left his wife and 
children ; and while they are there, seven weeks after 
the surrender, Guthrum, with thirty of the bravest of 
his followers, arrive to make good their pledge. 

The ceremony of baptism was performed at Wed- 
more, a royal residence which had probably escaped 
the fate of Chippenham, and still contained a church. 
Here Guthrum and his thirty nobles were sworn in, 
the soldiers of a greater than Woden, and the white 
linen cloth, the sign of their new faith, was bound 
round their heads. Alfred himself was godfather to 
the viking, giving him the Christian name of Athel- 
stan ; and the chrism-loosing, or unbinding of the 
sacramental cloths, was performed on the eighth day 
by Ethelnoth, the faithful Alderman of Somersetshire. 
After the religious ceremony there still remained the 
task of settling the terms upon which the victors and 
vanquished were hereafter to live together side by side 
in the same island ; for Alfred had the wisdom, even 
in his enemy's humiliation, to accept the accomplished 
fact, and to acknowledge East Anglia as a Danish 



ETHANDUNE. 123 



kingdom. The Witenagemot had been summoned to 
Wedmore, and was sitting there, and with their advice 
the treaty was then made, from which, according to 
some historians, English history begins. 

We have still the text of the two documents which 
together contain Alfred and Guthrum's peace, or the 
Treaty of Wedmore ; the first and shorter being 
probably the articles hastily agreed on before the 
capitulation of the Danish army at Chippenham, the 
latter the final terms settled between Alfred and his 
witan, and Guthrum and his thirty nobles, after mature 
deliberation and conference at Wedmore, but not form- 
ally executed until some years later. 

The shorter one, that made at the capitulation, runs 
as follows : — 

ALFRED AND GUTHRUM'S PEACE. 

" This is the peace that King Alfred, and King 
Guthrum, and the witan of all the English nation 
and all the people that are in East Anglia, have all 
ordained and with oaths confirmed, for themselves 
and their descendants, as well for born as unborn, 
who reck of God's mercy, or of ours. 

" First, concerning our land boundaries. These 
are up on the Thames, and then up on the Lea, and 
along the Lea unto its source, then straight to Bed- 
ford, then up the Ouse to Watling Street. 

" Then there is this : if a man be slain we reckon 
all equally dear, English and Dane, at eight half 
marks of pure gold, except the churl who dwells on 
gavel land and their leisings ; they are also equally 



124 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

dear at 200 shillings. And if a king's thane be 
accused of manslaughter, if he desire to clear himself 
let him do so before twelve king's thanes. If any 
man accuse a man who is of less degree than king's 
thane, let him clear himself with eleven of his equals 
and one king's thane. And so in every suit which 
may be for more than four mancuses ; and if he dare 
not, let him pay for it threefold as it may be valued. 

Of Warrantors. 

"And that every man know his warrantor, for men, 
and for horses, and for oxen. 

" And we all ordained, on that day that the oaths 
were sworn, that neither bondman nor freeman might 
go to the army without leave, nor any of them to us. 
But if it happen that any of them from necessity will 
have traffic with us, or we with them, for cattle or 
goods, that is to be allowed on this wise : that 
hostages be given in pledge of peace, and as evidence 
whereby it may be known that the party has a clean 
book." 

By the treaty Alfred is thus established as king of 
the whole of England south of the Thames ; of all the 
old kingdom of Essex south of the Lea, including 
London, Hertford, and St. Albans ; of the whole of the 
great kingdom of Mercia, which lay to the west of 
Watling Street, and of so much to the east as lay south 
of the Ouse. That he should have regained so much 
proves the straits to which he had brought the 
Northern army, who would have to give up all their 



I'/IHANDVNE. 12? 



new settlements round Gloster. That he should li 
resigned so much of the kingdom which had acknow- 
ledged his grandfather, father, and brothers as over- 
lords, proves how formidable his foe still was, even 
in defeat, and how thoroughly the north-eastern parts 
of the island had by this time been settled by 
the Danes. 

The remainder of the short treaty would seem 
simply to be provisional, and intended to settle the 
relations between Alfred's subjects and the army 
while it remained within the limits of the new Saxon 
kingdom. Many of the soldiers would have to break 
up their homes in Glostershire ; and, with this view, 
the halt at Cirencester is allowed, where, as we have 
already heard, they rest until the winter. While they 
remain in the Saxon kingdom there is to be no dis- 
tinction between Saxon and Dane. The were-gild, or 
life-ransom, is to be the same in each case for men of 
like rank ; and all suits for more than four mancuses 
(about twenty-four shillings) are to be tried by a jury 
of peers of the accused. On the other hand, only 
necessary communications are to be allowed between 
the Northern army and the people ; and where there 
must be trading, fair and peaceful dealing is to be 
ensured by the giving of hostages. This last pro- 
vision, and the clause declaring that each man shall 
know his warrantor, inserted in a five-clause treat}-, 
where nothing but what the contracting parties must 
hold to be of the very first importance would find 
place, is another curious proof of the care with which 
our ancestors, and all Germanic tribes, guarded against 



126 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

social isolation — the doctrine that one man has no- 
thing to do with another — a doctrine which the great 
body of their descendants, under the leading of 
Schultze, Delitzsch, and others, seem likely to repu- 
diate with equal emphasis in these latter days, both 
in Germany and England. 

Thus, in July 878, the foundations of the new 
kingdom of England were laid, for new it undoubt- 
edly became when the treaty of Wedmore was signed. 
The Danish nation, no longer strangers and enemies, 
are recognised by the heir of Cerdic as lawful owners of 
the full half of England. Having achieved which result, 
Guthrum and the rest of the new converts leave the 
Saxon camp and return to Cirencester at the end of 
twelve days, loaded with such gifts as it was still in 
the power of their conquerors to bestow : and Alfred 
was left in peace, to turn to a greater and more 
arduous task than any he had yet encountered. 



CHAPTER XI. 



RETROSPECT. 



" Whatsorjcr is brought on thee take cheerfully, and be patient when thou 
art changed to a low estate. For gold is tried in the fire \ and accept- 
able men in the furnace of adversity." 

The great Danish invasion of England in the ninth 
century, the history of which we have just concluded, 
is one of those facts which meet us at every turn in 
the life of the world, raising again and again the 
deepest of all questions. At first sight it stands out 
simply as the triumph of brute force, cruelty, and 
anarchy, over civilization and order. It was eminently 
successful, for the greater part of the kingdom re- 
mained subject to the invaders. In its progress all 
such civilization as had taken root in the land was for 
the time trodden out ; whole districts were depopulated ; 
lands thrown out of cultivation ; churches, abbeys, 
monasteries, the houses of nobles and peasants, razed 
to the ground ; libraries (such as then existed) and 
works of art ruthlessly burnt and destroyed. It threw 
back all Alfred's reforms for eight years. To the 
poor East Anglian, or West Saxon churl or monk 
who had been living his quiet life there, honestly and 
in the fear of God, according to his lights, — to him 
hiding away in the swamps of the forest, amongst the 



128 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

swine, running wild now for lack of herdsmen, and 
thinking bitterly of the sack of his home, and murder 
of his brethren, or of his wife and children by red- 
handed Pagans, the heavens would indeed seem to 
be shut, and the earth delivered over to the powers 
of darkness. Would it not seem so to us, if we were 
in like case ? Have we any faith which would stand 
such a strain as that ? 

Who shall say for himself that he has ? and yet 
what Christian does not know, in his heart of hearts, 
that there is such a faith, for himself and for the 
world — the faith which must have carried Alfred 
through those fearful years, and strengthened him to 
build up a new and better England out of the ruins 
the Danes left behind them ? For, hard as it must 
be to keep alive any belief or hope during a time 
when all around us is reeling, and the powers of 
evil seem to be let loose on the earth, when we look 
back upon these " days of the Lord " there is no truth 
which stands out more clearly on the face of history 
than this, that they all and each have been working 
towards order and life, that " the messengers of death 
have been indeed messengers of resurrection." 

In the case of our fathers, in the England of a 
thousand years ago, we have not to go far to learn 
what the Danes had to do for them. There is no need 
to accept the statements of later writers as to the 
condition of the Saxons and Angles at the time of 
the invasion. Hoveden, after dwelling on the wars 
which were so common between the several kingdoms 
in the eighth and early part of the ninth centuries, 



RETROSPECT. 129 



sums up, that in process of time all "virtue had so 

utterly disappeared in them that no nation what- 
soever might compare with them for treachery and 
villany ; " and in John Hardyng's rhymed Chronicle 
we find : 

11 Thus in defaute of la we and peace conserved 
Common profyte was wasted and devoured, 
Parcial profyte was sped and observed, 

And Venus also was commonly honoured — 
Among them was common, as the carte wave, 
Ryot, robbery, oppressyon, night and daye." 

Such pictures are, no doubt, very highly coloured, and 
there is nothing in contemporary writers to justify 
them ; nor can we believe that a nation in so utterly 
rotten a state would have met the Danes as the 
Angles and West Saxons did. But without going 
farther than Alfred's own writings, and the Saxon 
Chronicle and Asser, which Gontain, after all, the 
whole of the evidence at first hand which is left to us, 
we may see clearly enough that the nation, if not 
given over to " riot, robbery, and oppression, night and 
day," was settling on its lees. The country had be- 
come rich for those times under the lon^ and vigorous 
rule of Egbert, and the people were busy and skilful 
in growing corn, and multiplying flocks and herds, 
and heaping up silver and gold. But the "common 
profyte " was more and more neglected, as u parcial 
profyte," individual gain, came to be the chief object 
in men's eyes. Then the higher life of the nation 
began to be undermined. The laws were unjustly 
interpreted and administered by hereditary aldermen, 
S.L. viii. K 



LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREA T. 



who by degrees became almost independent of the 
king in their own shires and districts, in all matters 
not directly affecting his personal prerogative. The 
religious orders, who had been the protectors and 
instructors of the people, were tainted as deeply as 
the laity with the same self-seeking spirit. Alfred, in 
his preface to Gregory's pastoral, speaks sorrowfully 
of the wise men who were found formerly throughout 
the English race, both of the spiritual and secular 
condition — how the kings, and they who then had the 
government of the folk, "obeyed God and His mes- 
sengers, and maintained their peace, their customs, 
and their government at home, and also increased 
their country abroad, and sped well both in war and 
wisdom " — how the religious orders were " earnest, 
both about doctrine and learning, and the services of 
God, so that men from abroad sought instruction in 
this land, which we must now get from them if we 
would have it." In Ethelwulf 's reign both evils must 
have grown rapidly, for he was careless of his secular 
duties, and left alderman, and reeve, and sheriff more 
and more to follow their own ways, while he fostered 
the worst tendencies of his clergy, encouraging them 
to become more and more priests and keepers of the 
conscience, and less shepherds and instructors of the 
people. So religion was being separated from morality, 
and the inner and spiritual life of the nation was 
consequently dying out, and the people were falling 
into a dull, mechanical habit of mind. Their religion 
had become chiefly a matter of custom and routine ; 
and, as a sure consequence, a sensual and grovelling 



RETROSPECT. 131 



life was spreading through all classes. Soon material 
decay would follow, if it had not already begun ; for 
healthy, manly effort, honest and patient digging and 
delving, planting and building, is not to be had out 
of man or nation whose conscience has been put to 
sleep. When the corn and wine and oil, the silver 
and the gold, have become the main object of worship 
— that which men or nations do above all things desire 
— sham work of all kinds, and short cuts, by what we 
call financing and the like, will be the means by which 
they will attempt to gain them. 

When that state comes, men who love their country 
will welcome Danish invasions, civil wars, potato 
diseases, cotton famines, Fenian agitations, whatever 
calamity may be needed to awake the higher life 
again, and bid the nation arise and live. 

That such visitations do come at such times as a 
matter of fact is as clear as that in certain states of 
the atmosphere we have thunderstorms. The thunder- 
storm comes with perfect certainty, and as part of a 
natural and fixed order. We are all agreed upon that 
now. We all believe, I suppose, that there is an order, 
— that there are laws which govern the physical world, 
asserting themselves as much in storm and earthquake 
as in the succession of night and day, of seed-time 
and harvest. We who are Christians believe that order 
and those laws to proceed from God, to be expres- 
sions of His will. Do w r e not also believe that men 
are under a divine order as much as natural things ? 
that there is a law of righteousness founded on the 
will of God, as sure and abiding as the law of 

K 2 



1 32 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

gravitation ? that this law of righteousness, this divine 
order, under which human beings are living on this 
earth, must and does assert and vindicate itself through 
and by the acts and lives of men, as surely as the 
divine order in nature asserts itself through the agency 
of the invisible powers in earth and sea and air ? 

Surely Christianity, whatever else it teaches, at any 
rate assures us of this. And when we have made this 
faith our own, when we believe it, and not merely 
believe that we believe it, we have in our hand the 
clue to all human history. Mysteries in abundance 
will always remain. We may not be able to trace the 
workings of the law of righteousness in the confusions 
and bewilderments of our own day, or through the 
darkness and mist which shrouds so much of the life 
of other times and other races. But we know that it 
is there, and that it has its ground in a righteous will, 
which was the same a thousand years ago as it is 
to-day, which every man and nation can get to know ; 
and just in so far as they know and obey which will 
they be founding families, institutions, states, which 
will abide. 

If we want to test this truth in the most practical 
manner, we have only to take any question which has 
troubled, or is troubling, statesmen and rulers and 
nations, in our own day. The slavery question is the 
greatest of these, at any rate the one which has been 
most prominently before the world of late. In the 
divine order that institution was not recognised, there 
was no place at all set apart for it ; on the contrary, He 
on whose will that order rests had said that He came 



RETROSPECT. 133 



to break every yoke. And so slavery would give our 
kindred in America no rest, just as it would give us 
no rest in the first thirty years of the century. The 
nation, desiring to go on living its life, making money, 
subduing a continent, 

11 Pitching new states as old-world men pitch tents," 

tried every plan for getting rid of the " irrepressible 
negro " question, except the only one recognised in 
the divine order — that of making him free. The 
ablest and most moderate men, theWebsters and Clays, 
thought and spoke and worked to keep it on its legs. 
Missouri compromises were agreed to, " Mason and 
Dixon's lines" laid down, joint committees of both 
Houses — at last even a " crisis committee," as it was 
called — invented plan after plan to get it fairly out of 
the way by any means except the only one which the 
eternal law, the law of righteousness, prescribed. But 
He whose will must be done on earth was no party to 
Missouri compromises, and Mason and Dixon's line 
was not laid down on His map of North America. 
And there never were wanting men who could re- 
cognise His will, and denounce every compromise, 
every endeavour to set it aside, or escape from 
it, as a ''covenant with death and hell." Despised 
and persecuted men — Garrisons and John Browns — 
were raised up to fight this battle, with tongue and 
pen and life's blood, the weak things of this world to 
confound the mighty ; men who could look bravely in 
the face the whole power and strength of their nation 
in the faith of the old prophet : u Associate yourselves 



134 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 



and ye shall be broken in pieces; gather yourselves 
together and it shall come to nought, for God is with 
us." And at last the thunderstorm broke, and when 
it cleared away the law of righteousness had asserted 
itself once again, and the nation was delivered. 

And so it has been, and is, and will be to the end 
of time with all nations. We have all our " irre- 
pressible " questions of one kind or another, more or 
less urgent, rising up again and again to torment and 
baffle us, refusing to give us any peace until they have 
been settled in accordance with the law of righteous- 
ness, which is the will of God. No clever handling of 
them will put them to rest. Such work will not last. 
If we have wisdom and faith enough amongst us to 
ascertain and do that will, we may settle them for 
ourselves in clear skies. If not, the clouds will gather, 
the atmosphere grow heavy, and the storm break in 
due course, and they will be settled for us in ways 
which we least expect or desire, for it is " the Lord's 
controversy." 

In due course! perhaps; but what if this due course 
means lifetimes, centuries? Alas! this is indeed the 
cry which has been going up from the poor earth these 
thousands of years — 

" The priests and the rulers are swift to wrong, 
And the mills of God are slow to grind. " 

How long, O Lord, how long ? The precise times 
and seasons man shall never know on this earth. 
These the Lord has kept in His own power. But 
courage, my brother ! Can we not see, the blindest 



RETROSPECT. 135 



of us, that the mills arc working swiftly, at least in our 
day ? This is no age in which shams or untruths, 
whether old or new, are likely to have a quiet time or 
a long life of it. In all departments of human affairs 
— religious, political, social — we are travelling fast, in 
England and elsewhere, and under the hand and 
guidance, be sure, of Him who made the world, and 
is able and willing to take care of it. Only let us 
quit ourselves like men, trusting to Him to put down 
whatsoever loveth or maketh a lie, and in His own 
time to establish the new earth in which shall dwell 
righteousness. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE KING'S BOARD OF WORKS. 

"Except the Lord build the houfce, their labour is but lost that build" 
"Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain." 

It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the amount and 
difficulty of the work which lay before Alfred there 
at Wedmore, when he had at last got fairly rid of 
Guthrum and the army, and was able to think about 
something else than prompt fighting. The witan 
was assembled there, and may probably have coun- 
selled their king on many parts of that work. We 
only know, that they considered and passed the 
Treaty of Wedmore, and forfeited the lands of certain 
nobles who had been false to their oaths of alle- 
giance. The council would not have remained sitting 
a day longer than they could help, as it must have 
been already getting towards harvest -time. They 
left their king, still young in years, but old in expe- 
rience and thoughtfulness, to set about his work of 
building up the nation again as best it might please 
him. 

We cannot doubt that with Athelney and Ethandune 
fresh in his mind, and GuthrunVs army still undis- 
banded at Cirencester, his first thought and care will 



THE KING'S BOARD OF WORKS. 137 

have been of the defence of the realm for the future, 
and one of his first acts to commence the restoration 
of the forts and strong places. Dr. Giles points out 
the striking contrast in these early wars between the 
Saxons and Danes in their skill in the erection and 
use of fortifications. Through the whole of these 
wars the former seem scarcely ever able to hold a town 
or fort, if we except Cynuit ; while the Danes never 
lose one. At the beginning of each year of the war 
the chroniclers relate monotonously, how the Pagans 
seize some town or strong place, such as Nottingham, 
Reading, Exeter, Chippenham, apparently without 
difficulty, certainly with no serious delay ; but when 
once they are in it they are never dislodged by force. 
In the same way, none of their fortified camps, such 
as that at Wareham, were ever taken ; and the re- 
mains at Uffington Castle and Bratton Castle show 
how skilful they were in these military earthworks, and 
what formidable places the crests of hills on the open 
downs became under their hands. Alfred never lost 
a hint, for he had a mind thoroughly humble, and 
therefore open to the reception of new truth ; so in 
setting to work to restore the forts which had been 
destroyed or damaged, we may be sure he profited 
by the lessons of the great struggle. At what time, 
or in what order, the restoration took place, we have 
no hint. In this, as in almost all parts of Alfred's 
work, we only know the results. How efficiently it 
was done, however, between the peace of Wedmore 
and the next great war, which broke out in 893, we 
may gather from the fact that the great leader of 



138 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

that invasion, Hasting, was never able to take an 
important town or stronghold. 

That terrible viking, who for years had been the 
scourge of the French coasts, was in this same 
autumn of 879 at Fulham. Dr. Pauli, who has re- 
markable sagacity in suggesting what the short vague 
notices in the Chronicles really mean, thinks that 
Hasting had been with Guthrum both at Ethan- 
dune and Chippenham, and from thence accom- 
panied the beaten army to Cirencester. That after 
the return of the Danish king and his thirty nobles 
from their baptism at Wedmore, he left the army, 
taking with him his own followers, and all those of 
the army who refused to become Christians, and with 
these sailed round the south coast, and up the Thames 
to Fulham. On the other hand, after such a lesson 
of the power wielded by Alfred, and his capacity 
as a leader, one must doubt whether so able a com- 
mander as Hasting would have been ready at once 
to open another campaign in Wessex. The Saxon 
Chronicle simply says that " a body of pirates drew 
together, and sat down at Fulham on the Thames;" 
Asser, that "a large army of Pagans sailed from 
foreign parts into the river Thames, and joined the 
army which was already in the country." On the 
whole, it seems more probable that Hasting, or 
whoever was the leader of the Danes who wintered 
at Fulham in this year, came from abroad, and was 
joined there by the wild spirits from Guthrum's army, 
the resolute Pagans and pirates to whom peaceful life 
was thoroughly distasteful. The greater part of that 



THE KING'S BOARD OF WORK 139 

army certainly never left Cirencester till the next 
spring-, and remained faithful to the terms of the 
Treaty of Wedmore. So the Danes at Fulham, 
seeing no chance of rousing their countrymen to 
another attempt on Alfred's crown and kingdom, and 
witnessing through the autumn and winter months 
the vigour with which the King was providing for the 
defence of the country, sailed away to Ghent. And 
from this time, for upwards of four precious years, no 
band of Pagans landed on English soil, and the 
whole land had rest, and King Alfred leisure to turn 
to all the great reforms that he had in his mind. 

So, for one thing, the rebuilding and strengthening 
of the fortresses all along the coast could now go on 
without hindrance. The whole of the bookland of 
England was held subject to the building of bridges 
and fortresses, and marching against an enemy, so 
that the w r hole manhood of the kingdom might have 
been at once turned upon this work. But Alfred 
had learned in the first years of his reign that his 
people would not well bear forcing ; moreover, he had 
new ideas on the subject of building ; was feeling his 
way towards the substitution of stone for wood-work, 
and importing the most skilled masons to be found 
on the Continent to instruct his own people. In his 
scriptural readings, too, he will have become ac- 
quainted with the story of Solomon's buildings ; how 
that wisest of monarchs, by the forced labour on his 
magnificent public works, exhausted the energies and 
alienated the affections of his people, an example to 
be carefully avoided by a Christian king. Such of the 



140 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

strong places, then, on the coast and elsewhere as 
belonged to the King himself, rose steadily without 
haste and without pause from their ruins, with all the 
newest improvements which the best foreign workmen, 
or the experience of the late war, could suggest. At 
first it did not fare so well with those which had to 
be entrusted to others, and nothing can give us a more 
vivid impression of the dead weight of indifference 
and stupidity which Alfred had to contend against 
in his early efforts than the passage in Asser which 
speaks of this business, of restoring these fortified 
places. It occurs under the year 887, by which time 
it is plain, from the end of the passage, that the King 
had triumphed over all his difficulties, and had inspired 
the officers in all parts of his kingdom with some of 
his own spirit and energy. "What shall I say," 
writes his faithful friend, " of the cities and towns 
which he restored, and of others which he built where 
none had been before ? of the royal halls and chambers 
wonderfully erected by his command, with wood and 
stone ? of the royal residences, constructed of stone, 
removed from their old sites, and handsomely rebuilt 
under his direction in more suitable places?" probably 
where they were less open to assaults, such as those 
which had taken Reading and Chippenham. " Besides 
the disease above mentioned, he was disturbed by the 
quarrels of his friends, who would voluntarily undergo 
little or no toil, though it were for the common need 
of the kingdom ; but he alone, sustained by the aid of 
Heaven, like a skilful pilot strove to steer his ship laden 
with much wealth into the safe and much-desired 



THE KING'S BOARD OF WORKS. 141 

harbour, though almost all his crew were tired, and 
suffered them not to faint, or hesitate, though sailing 
amidst the manifold waves and eddies of this present 
life. For all his bishops, earls, nobles, favourite 
ministers and prefects, who, next to God and the king, 
had the whole government of the kingdom, as is 
fitting, continually received from him instruction, 
respect, exhortation, and command — nay, at last, when 
they continued disobedient, and his long patience was 
exhausted, he would reprove them severely, and 
censure their vulgar folly and obstinacy ; and thus 
he directed their attention to his own will, and to the 
common interests of the kingdom. Owing, however, 
to the sluggishness of his people, these admonitions of 
the King were either not fulfilled, or begun late in the 
hour of need, and so fell out the less to the advantage 
of those who executed them. For I will say nothing 
of the castles which he ordered to be built, but which, 
being begun late, were never finished, because the 
enemy broke in upon them by sea and land, and, as 
often fell out, the thwarters of the King's will repented 
w T hen it was too late, and were ashamed at their non- 
performance of his commands. I speak of repentance 
when it is too late," the good Bishop indignantly con- 
tinues, " on the testimony of Scripture, by which it 
appears that numberless persons have had cause for 
too much sorrow after many insidious evils have 
come to pass. But though by these means, sad to 
say, they may be bitterly afflicted and roused to 
sorrow by the loss of fathers, wives, children, ministers, 
servant-men, servant-maids, and furniture and hou - 



142 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

hold stuff, what is the use of hateful repentance, when 
their kinsmen are dead, and they cannot aid them, or 
redeem those who are captive from captivity ? for 
they are not able even to assist those who have 
escaped, as they have not wherewith to sustain even 
their own lives. They repented, therefore, when it 
was too late, and grieved at their incautious neglect of 
the King's commands, and praised the King's wisdom 
with one voice, and tried with all their power to fulfil 
what they had before refused ; that is to say, the 
erection of castles, and other things generally useful 
to the whole kingdom." 

A vivid picture, truly, of the state of things in 
England a thousand years ago, for all of which might 
we not without much research find parallels enough 
in our own day ? One would fain hope that we are 
not altogether without some equivalent in late years 
for that patient, never-faltering pressure of the King, 
sometimes lighting up into scathing reproof of the 
" vulgar folly and obstinacy " of many of those through 
whom he has to work. It is refreshing to find a 
bishop fairly roused by these squabbles — this un- 
reasoning sluggishness of men who called themselves 
the King's friends, and should have been doing the 
work he had appointed them — denouncing the repent- 
ance of such, after the mischief has been done, as 
"hateful," not a worthy act at all, or one likely to 
deserve the approbation of God or the King, in this 
bishop's judgment 

The reference to the " breaking in of the enemy by 
land and sea" upon the unfinished fortifications, must 



THE KING'S BOARD OF WORK 143 

point to the years between 872 and 878 ; for from the 
date of the peace of Wedmore no strong place of the 
Saxons was taken during Alfred's life. It was not 
until 885 that the Northmen even ventured on any 
descent in force on the coast of England. In that 
year the army which had gathered round the band of 
old heathen rovers who followed Hasting from Ful- 
ham to Ghent in the spring of 880, and had been 
ravaging the banks of the Meuse and the Scheldt ever 
since, after wintering at Amiens, at last broke in two. 
One half, under a leader whose name has not come 
down to us, took to their ships, and, in their old form, 
stole up the Thames and Medway, and made a sudden 
dash at Rochester. But now for the first time they 
were completely foiled in their first onslaught. They 
could not storm the place, which was well fortified 
and gallantly held, so they threw up strong works 
before the gates, in hopes of taking the town by famine 
or storm before succour could arrive. In this, how- 
ever, they were soon undeceived. Alfred appeared 
promptly in Kent at the head of a strong force, and, 
without awaiting his attack, the Danes fled to their 
ships, leaving great spoil which they had brought 
with them from France, including a number of horses 
and prisoners, in their fortified camp before Rochester 
Gate. And so they betake themselves to France again, 
having found this visit to England very decidedly 
unprofitable. 

We may fairly conclude then, that by the year 
885 those provoking bishops, earls, nobles, favourite 
ministers, and prefects, had come to their senses, 



144 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 



and had learnt to obey their king's commands, and 
to see that there was good reason for anything he 
might set them to work on. Thus, as the fruit of 
years of patient and steady pressure, at last Alfred 
has his forts in order, a chain of them all round the 
southern coast some say, and his royal residences and 
larger towns for the most part sufficiently protected 
against sudden attack, so far as walls and ditches will 
secure them. London only still lies in a miserably 
defenceless state, all the best parts in ruins, the 
respectable inhabitants fled across seas or into 
Wessex ; and only a wild, lawless population, the 
sweepings of many nations and tribes, left to haunt 
the river side, picking up a precarious living, no one 
can tell how, and ready to join any band of marauders 
who might be making use of the deserted houses. 
The great city which had been almost able to stand 
alone, and assert its independence of Mercia or of any 
overlord, ever since Ethelwulf s time, has fallen to be 
a mere colony of 'long-shore men, gathering round 
changing bands of pirates. The city has been Alfred's 
ever since the Treaty of Wedmore, and he has been 
no doubt carefully considering what can be done, and 
preparing to deal with it; but it is an arduous and ex- 
pensive undertaking, and has to wait till more press- 
ing building operations — particularly the necessary 
coast defences — have been completed. 

At length in 886 all his preparations are made, and 
he marches on London with a sufficient force to deal 
with such organized bands of Northmen as might for 
the time be holding it, and with the 'long-shore popu- 



THE KING'S BOARD OF WORK 14- 

lation. Ethclwcrd's Chronicle speaks of a siege, and 
Huntingdon's of a 'great force of Danes,' who fled 
when the place was invested; but the Saxon Chronicle 
and Asser contain no hint, either of a siege, or of any 
organized force within the city. It is probable there- 
fore that London submitted to Alfred at once without 
a blow. Here, in what had been even in Roman 
times the great commercial capital of England, his 
splendid organizing talents had full scope during the 
year. The accounts in the best authorities agree 
entirely as to this work of 886. They are short and 
graphic. "In this year Alfred, King of the West 
Saxons, after the burning of cities and slaying of the 
people, honourably rebuilt the city of London, and 
made it again habitable. He gave it into the custody 
of his son-in-law Ethelred, alderman of Mercia ; to 
which king all the Angles and Saxons who before 
had been dispersed everywhere, or were in bondage 
under the Pagans, voluntarily turned, and submitted 
themselves to his dominion." The foreign masons 
and mechanics, of w T hom Alfred by this time had 
large numbers in his regular pay, made swift work 
with the rebuilding of London ; and within a few 
years, under Ethelred's rule, the city had regained 
its old pre-eminence. Saxons, Angles, and Danes 
thronged to it indiscriminately, the latter occupying 
their own quarters. A colony of them settled on the 
southern side of the river, and built Southwark (Syd 
virke, the southern fortification), where one of the 
principal thoroughfares, Tooley Street (a corruption 
of St. Olave's Street), still bears the name of the 

S.L. VIII. L 



l 4 6 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

patron saint of Norway. On the northern side of 
the Thames also, to the west of the city, they esta- 
blished another settlement, in which was their chief 
burial-place, and named it St. Clement Danes. We 
may reckon the rebuilding and resettlement of London 
as the crowning act of the King's work as a restorer 
of the fenced cities of his realm, and have now to 
follow him, as well as the confused materials at our 
command will allow us, in other departments no less 
difficult to handle than this of the Board of Works, 
in which his wise and unflagging energy was bringing 
order out of chaos, and economizing and developing 
die great resources of his kingdom. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE KING'S WAR OFFICE AND ADMIRALTY. 

"And I took the chief of your tribes, wise men and known % and made I 

/leads over you, captains over hundreds, and captains oz'cr fifties, and 
captains over tens, and officers amongst your tribes" 

The restoration of all the old fortresses of the king- 
dom, and the building of a number of fresh ones, 
though apparently the work which Alfred thought 
of first, and pressed on most vigorously, was after 
all only a reform of second-rate importance com- 
pared with the reconstruction and permanent orga- 
nization of his army and navy. This also he took 
in hand at once, going straight to the root of the 
matter, as indeed was always the habit with this 
king, his whole nature being of a thoroughness which 
would never allow him to work only on the surface. 

It is by no means easy to understand the military 
organization of the West Saxons before Alfred's 
reign, if indeed they had anything that may be 
called an organization. That every freeman was 
liable to a call to arms whenever the country was 
threatened by an enemy, or the king was bent on 
invading his neighbour's territory — and that the king 
had no force of his own, but was in the hands of his 
aldermen and earls, and obliged to rely on what force 

L 2 



148 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

they could bring together — this seems clear enough, 
but unfortunately we have no means of knowing with 
any accuracy how the call was made, what were the 
penalties for disobeying it, or the conditions of service 
in the field, — whether the soldier received pay and 
rations, or had to support himself. So far as we can 
gather from the meagre accounts of the wars in 
Ethelwulfs and Ethelred's reign, and of Alfred's 
early campaigns, as soon as danger threatened the 
hereditary alderman of the shire nearest the point 
of attack summoned all freeholders within his juris- 
diction, and took the field, at once, while the king, 
through their aldermen, gathered troops in other 
shires, and brought them up to the scene of action 
as fast as he could. Thus in 86 1 the Aldermen 
Osric and Ethelwulf, with the men of Hants and 
Berks, fell at once upon the pillagers of Winchester 
without waiting for King Ethelbert ; and again Ethel- 
wulf, ten years later, in 871, fights the battle of 
Englefield with the first division of the Danish army 
from Reading, only three days after the arrival of 
the Pagans, before Ethelred and Alfred can come 
up. More instances might be cited, if needed, to 
show that either the penalties on slackness in coming 
to muster were very sharp, or that the zeal of the 
West Saxons for fighting was of the strongest. As a 
rule, the men of the shire might evidently be relied 
on to meet the first brunt of attack. It is equally 
clear that these levies could not be depended upon 
for any lengthened time. They dwindled away after 
a few weeks, or months, on the approach of harvest, 



WAR OFFICE AND ADMIRALTY, 



or the failure in supplies, or zeal. In short, the 

System was practically, to a great extent, a volun 
one, and very uncertain in its operation, throwing 
altogether unfair burdens now on this district, now 

on the other, as the Pagans gained a fortified position 
in Berkshire, Dorsetshire, or Wiltshire. 

During his early campaigns Alfred must have *n:n 
the disadvantage at which he and the West Saxons 
were placed by this haphazard system, and have 
gradually matured the changes which he was now 
able to introduce. These were somewhat as fol- 
low. The whole fighting strength of the kingdom was 
divided into three parts or companies. Of these, one 
company was called out, Asser says, and remained 
on duty, " night and day, for one month, after which 
they returned to their homes, and w r ere relieved by 
the second company. At the end of the second 
month, in the same way, the third company relieved 
the second, who returned to their homes, where they 
spent two months," until their turn for service came 
round again. No military service was required of 
any man beyond three months in the year, so that 
during the three winter months neither of the three 
military companies was on duty. Of the company 
on duty for the time being, a portion was told off for 
the defence of the principal fortresses, and the re- 
mainder constituted a body-guard or standing army, 
moving about under arms with the King and court. 

This at least is the account which has come down 
to us, but it is obviously incomplete or incorrect It 
is quite impossible that a third of the fighting 



LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 



of the whole kingdom could have been constantly 
maintained under arms by Alfred. For, whatever 
may have been the case in the times of his father 
and brothers, there can be little doubt that he both 
maintained and paid his soldiers. This appears from 
his own writings, as well as from the chroniclers. After 
declaring that he had never much yearned after 
earthly power, the King goes on (in the interpola- 
tion in the seventeenth chapter of his translation of 
Bbethius) : " Nevertheless I was desirous of materials 
for the work which I was commanded to perform ; 
that is, that I might honourably and fitly exercise 
the power which was entrusted to me. Moreover, no 
man can show any skill, or exercise or control any 
power, without tools and materials; that is, of every 
craft the materials without which man cannot exer- 
cise the craft. This, then, is a king's material, and 
his tools to reign with—that he have his land well 
peopled. He must have bead-men and soldiers 
and workmen ; without these tools no king can show 
his craft. This is also his material that he must 
have as well as the tools — provision for the three 
classes. This is then their provision ; land to live on, 
and pay, and weapons, and meat, and ale, and clothes, 
and whatsoever is necessary for the three classes. 
He cannot without these preserve the tools, or with- 
out the tools accomplish any of those things which 
he is commanded to perform. Therefore I was 
desirous of materials wherewith to exercise the 
power, that my work and the report thereof should 
not be forgotten or hidden. For every craft and 



WAR OFFICE AND ADMIRALTY. 151 

every power soon becomes old, and is passed over 
in silence, if it be without wisdom. Because whatso- 
ever is done through folly no one can ever reckon for 
craft. This I will now truly say, that while I have 
lived I have striven to live worthily, and after my 
life to leave to the men who were after me my 
memory in good works." 

I could not touch the passage without quoting it 
whole ; for, w r hile treading on dangerous ground, it 
seems to me to vindicate " king-craft " as Alfred 
understood and practised it, and to throw a gleam 
of light on his brave and pious life which we cannot 
spare. " King-craft " in the mouth of James I. 
meant the professional cleverness of the sovereign — 
that cunning, a substitute for courage, by which he, 
as king, could gain his selfish ends and exalt his 
office, as he understood it. A contemptible, not to 
say hateful meaning, which the phrase has retained 
ever since in England. Alfred's idea of kingcraft 
is "a work which he is commanded to perform," 
which it is woe to him if he fail in performing. The 
two ideas are as w T ide apart as the character and 
work of the two kings. 

But the evidence does not rest on this passage. 
Asser, speaking of the division which the King made 
of his income, says that one-third of the part which he 
devoted to secular purposes went to pay his soldiers 
and ministers; and Florence, that "he gave the first 
portion of his income yearly to his soldiers." Now, 
however highly we may be inclined to reckon Alfred's 
income, it is quite impossible to suppose that one- 



15* LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

sixth of it could have found weapons, meat, ale, and 
clothes, as well as pay, for anything like a third of 
his available force. It is probable, then, that only a 
small part of the company whose turn it might be 
for active service were actually called out, and kept 
under arms, either with the court, or in the fortresses. 
These were paid by the King, while the remainder 
of the company were not paid, unless they too were 
actually called out, though during their month they 
were no doubt constantly exercised, and kept in readi- 
ness to muster at any moment. 

It is not, however, of much importance, even if it 
were possible to ascertain the precise detail of Alfred's 
military reforms. The essence and result of them is 
clear enough ; namely, that he had always a full 
third of his whole force ready to act against an 
enemy at a moment's notice, and that the burdens 
of military service were equally distributed over the 
whole kingdom. 

Side by side with the fortifications of his coast- 
towns, and the re-organization of his land-forces, the 
King pushed on with energy the construction of such 
a navy as would enable him to beat the Northmen 
on their own element. We have seen that, early 
in his first short interval of peace, he was busy 
with this work, having no doubt even then satisfied 
himself that his kingdom could only be effectually 
defended by sea. In 875 he puts to sea for the 
first time, and fights his first naval battle with suc- 
cess, taking one of the sea-king's ships. This will 
have given him a model upon which to improve 



AR OFFICE AND ADMIRALTY. 15: 

the build of his own ships. He accordingly, in < 

" commands boats and long ships to be built through- 
Out the kingdom, in order that he might offer battle 
by sea to the enemy as they were coming, and on 
board of these he placed seamen, and appointed 
them to watch the seas." The result of this wise 
foresight was the destruction of the Danish fleet 
off Swanage, on its way to the relief of Exeter. 

But the West Saxon ships were no better than 
the enemy's, until Alfred's practical sagacity and 
genius for mechanics were brought to bear on ship- 
building. The precise year in which the great recon- 
struction of his fleet was made is not ascertainable. 
The Saxon Chronicle places it as late as 897, but 
it will be convenient to notice it here while we are 
on the subject. The vessels then which, after much 
study of the matter, he ordered to be built, were 
twice as long and high as those of the Danes, and 
had forty, sixty, or in some instances even a larger 
number of oars. They were also, it is said, swifter 
and steadier than the older vessels, as well as longer 
and higher, and " were shapen neither like the Frisian 
nor the Danish, but so as it seemed to the King they 
would be most efficient." Alfred's galleys are per- 
haps less puzzling than the Greek trireme ; at the 
same time it is not easy to imagine how the account 
in the Chronicle can be correct. Galleys would 
naturally be slower in proportion to their height, 
though of course much more formidable as fighti 
vessels. The West Saxon was not a seafaring man ; 
at best was only inclined to ^o on board ship 



154 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

some definite and immediate piece of fighting, and 
the King's regular fleet was manned by sailors of 
many tribes, — Frisians, Franks, Britons, Scots, Armo- 
ricans ; even pagan Danes, who took service with 
him. And all these, of whatever race, " according 
to their merits, were ruled, loved, honoured, and 
enriched by Alfred." And in this department, as in 
his military reforms, results at once and abundantly 
justified his sagacity, for he was never badly worsted 
in a sea-fight, and towards the end of his reign his 
fleet had swept the coasts of England clear of the 
sea-rovers. 

Within two years after the peace of Wedmore the 
fleet was ready to go to sea, and it was not a day too 
soon. At no former time, indeed, were the western 
coasts of Europe more terribly scourged by the North- 
men. The great empire of Charlemagne, broken into 
weak fragments, was overrun by them. The army 
that had so recently left Fulham under the leader- 
ship of Hasting, reinforced by constant arrivals from 
Norway and Denmark, had left Ghent in 88 1, and 
laid waste the banks of the Meuse and the Scheldt. 
They were even now pressing southwards, and threat- 
ening Paris and Amiens. It is a time for vigilance 
and prompt action if the new kingdom is to be con- 
solidated in peace. One small squadron of the North- 
men, sweeping south, turn towards the English coasts 
in the hope of plunder, in the summer of 882, and 
find the King ready for them. Alfred himself goes 
to meet them ; and of the four Danish vessels two 
were taken fighting and all hands killed, and the 



II r AR OFFICE AND A DM IRA LTV. 155 

commanders of the remaining two surrendered after 
a desperate resistance. " They were sorely distressed 
and wounded," the Chronicle remarks, " before they 
surrendered." 

But the first occasion on which the new organiza- 
tion of the forces of the kingdom was put to any 
severe test was not until three years later, when the 
attempt on Rochester, already mentioned, was made. 
To understand the importance of it, we must go back 
to the time when Guthrum Athelstan crossed the 
Mercian borders, under solemn pledges to settle 
quietly down as undisputed king of East Anglia, 
under nominal allegiance, indeed, to his great con- 
queror, but practically as the equal sovereign of a 
friendly but independent kingdom. Unluckily for 
the good resolutions of the new convert, there was a 
tempter at his elbow. One Isembart, a near relative 
of Carloman, king of the Western Franks, had been 
exiled by that monarch, and had served with Guthrum 
in his last invasion of Wessex. He is bound for his 
own country, where there are all manner of chances 
in these times for rebels ; and the king of East Anglia, 
unable to resist the scent of battle and the chances 
of plunder, accompanies him with a force. After a 
short career of atrocities, Guthrum Athelstan is de- 
feated in a battle near Sancourt, and returns to East 
Anglia, having, on the one hand, roused Alfred's 
suspicions, and on the other restored his own relations 
with Hasting and the Northern bands. During the 
next year or two settlements of pirates are allowed 
to establish themselves on the East Anglian coasts, 



1 56 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

and before 885 several of the hostages given to Alfred 
after the battle of Ethandune had died, and their 
places remained unfilled. In short, there are the 
gravest reasons for Alfred to doubt the good faith, 
or the good-will, of Guthrum Athelstan and his 
people. 

At this crisis came the Danish descent on Kent 
and siege of Rochester, abandoned precipitately by 
the invaders on the prompt advance of Alfred. They 
fled to their ships and made off, some back to the 
French coast, and others across the Thames to Essex. 
Here they found shelter and assistance in Bemfleet 
and other places, which had become little better than 
nests of heathen pirates, without any hindrance, if not 
with the open sanction, of the ex-viking, now Chris- 
tian king of East Anglia. Alfred's patience is now 
fairly exhausted, and, resolved to give his faithless 
ally a severe lesson, he gathers a fleet at once in the 
Medway, puts troops on board, and sends them after 
the last division of the invaders, with orders to retaliate, 
or, as Asser puts it, " for the sake of plunder." The 
West Saxon fleet soon fell in with sixteen Danish 
vessels, followed them up the Stour, and, after a hard 
fight, took the whole of them, and put the crews to 
the sword. Had the King himself been on board, 
the success would most likely have been complete. 
As it was, the pirate communities of the East Anglian 
coast hastily got together another fleet, with which 
they attacked the King's fleet at the mouth of the 
river "while they were reposing," and gained some 
advantage over them. 



I J \ I R OFFICE AND ADMIRAL TV. i S 7 

The Saxon Chronicle and Asser both add to the 
occurrences of the year that u the army which dwelt 
in East Anglia disgracefully broke the peace which 
they had concluded with King Alfred." Dr. Pauli 
also notices a visit of Rollo to East Anglia at this 
same time, the great viking having quitted the siege 
of Paris to answer the summons of his old comrade 
in arms. But the English chroniclers are silent on 
the subject, and it would seem that the cloud passed 
away without further hostilities. Alfred had every 
reason to be satisfied with the first trial and proof of 
his re-organized fleet and army, and had read the 
people of the East Anglian coast a lesson which they 
would not lightly forget. Guthrum Athelstan, for his 
part, may have either repented of his bad faith, and 
resolved to amend and live quietly, as we may hope, 
or had come to the conclusion, alone or in consulta- 
tion with Rollo, that there is nothing but sure and 
speedy defeat to be gained by an open rupture with 
Alfred. In any case he took no active step to avenge 
the invasion of his kingdom, or to retaliate, and from 
that time lived peaceably to the day of his death 
in 890. 

" A Prince, then," says Machiavelli (cap. xiv.), " is to 
have no other design, nor thought, nor study but war 
and the arts and disciplines thereof : for indeed this 
is the only possession worthy of a prince, and is of so 
much importance that it not only preserves those that 
are born princes in their patrimonies, but advances 
men of private condition to that honourable 
To which saying those who least admire the great 



158 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

Italian will agree to this extent, that the arts and 
disciplines of war should form the main object of a 
prince's study until he has made his country as safe 
against foreign attack as it can be made without 
dwarfing the nation's life. This is what Alfred did 
for his kingdom and people, between the peace of 
Wedmore and the autumn of 885. His reward was 
profound peace for eight more years. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE KING'S LAWS. 

" Give the king Thy judgments, God, and Thy righteousness unto the 

king's son. 
" Then shall he judge Thy people according to the right, and defend 

the poor. " 

THE king's next work after putting his kingdom in 
a state of defence, and to the best of his ability 
e/suring his people a safe country to iive in, is to 
give them laws for the ordering and governing of 
their lives. 

This business of laying down rules as to how his 
English people shall be governed seems one of alto- 
gether startling solemnity and importance to Alfred ; 
and is, indeed, not a business which it is desirable that 
any king, or parliament, or other persons or bodies, 
should undertake lightly. It would be instructive to 
inquire carefully how much of the trouble and misery 
which has come upon the land since his time has been 
caused by the want of Alfred's spirit in this matter 
of law-making. We have had at one time or another, 
during the past thousand years, as terrible experience 
as most nations of what strong men, or strong das 
of men, can do in the way of making laws to assert 



i6o LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 



their own wills. The laws imposing all sorts of reli- 
gious disabilities, the combination laws, the corn 
laws, are only some of the best known instances of 
attempts in this direction. The Statute-book is not 
yet clear of them, and who can hope that we have 
seen their end, though just at present there is happily 
no class strong enough to impose its own will on the 
nation? Our sins just now in this matter of law- 
making are rather those of indifference, or cowardice. 
Hand-to-mouth legislation, as it has been called— a 
desire to ride off on side issues, not to meet our 
difficulties fairly in the face, but rather to do such 
temporary tinkering as will just tide over the imme- 
diate crisis — is our temptation. 

Here, indeed, in our law-making, as in all other 
departments of human life, the loss of faith in God 
is bearing its fruit, and taking all nerve and tone out 
of our system. For that loss must be fatal to all 
high ideal, and without a high ideal no people will 
ever have or make good laws. Alfred has left us no 
doubt as to his. There is an order laid down from 
everlasting for the government of mankind, so he 
believes, which is the expression of the will of God, 
and to which man has to conform. He himself finds 
it about his path, and about his bed, established 
already on every side of him. He has become aware 
of it gradually, by the experience of his own life, 
through his own failures and successes. He has 
been educated by these into the knowledge that he, 
the King, is himself under a government, even the 
government of Him whose laws the material universe, 



THE KING'S LA IVS. 161 

all created things, obey, but whose highest empire is 
in the hearts and wills of men. Ruling and making 
laws are no light matter to one who has made this 
discovery ; he can exercise neither function according 
to his own pleasure or caprice, or for his own ends. 
His one aim as a law-maker must be, to recognise 
and declare those eternal laws of God — as a ruler, to 
bring his own life, and that of his people, into 
accordance with them. 

Coming, then, to his task with this view, we find 
Alfred's code, or "Alfred's dooms," as they are called, 
starting with an almost literal transcript of the Deca- 
logue. The only variations of any moment are, that 
the second commandment is omitted in its right 
place, and stands as the tenth (in the words of the 
23d verse of the 20th of Exodus), "Work not thou 
for thyself golden gods or silver," and that in the 
fourth the Saxon text runs, " In six days Christ 
wrought the heavens and earth and all shapen things 
that in them are, and rested on the seventh day : and 
for that the Lord hallowed it." The substitution of 
Christ for the Lord here is characteristic of the King. 
Immediately after the ten commandments come se- 
lections from the Mosaic code, chiefly from the 21st, 
22d, and 23d chapters of Exodus, very slightly 
modified. 

The most important variations are as follow : — 

Exodus xxi. Alfred's Dooms. 

1. Now these are the judgments 11. These are the dooms that 
which thou shalt set before them. thou shalt set them : — If an] 

2. If thou buy a Hebrew servant, buy a Christian bondsman, be he 
S.L. VIII. M 



162 



LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 



six years he shall serve, and in 
the seventh he shall go out free 
for nothing. 

3. If he came in by himself, he 
shall go out by himself: if he were 
married, then his wife shall go out 
with him. 

4. If his master have given him 
a wife, and she have born him 
sons or daughters ; the wife and 
her children shall be her master's, 
and he shall go out by himself. 

5. And if the servant shall 
plainly say, I love my master, my 
wife, and my children ; I will not 
go out free : 

6. Then his master shall bring 
him unto the judges ; he shall also 
bring him unto the door, or unto 
the doorpost, and his master shall 
bore his ear through with an awl, 
and he shall serve him for ever. 



The dooms continue an almost literal transcript 
of the 2 1st chapter of Exodus, with the exception 
of the 17th verse, which is omitted. The slight 
modifications of the Hebrew Law in the first verses 
of the 2 2d chapter are again characteristic. 



bondsman to him six years, the 
seventh be he free unbought. With 
such clothes as he went in, with 
such go he out. If he himself 
have a wife, go she out with him. 
If, however, the lord gave him a 
wife, go she and her bairn the 
lord's. If then the bondsman 
say, I will not go from my lord, 
nor from my wife, nor from my 
bairn, nor from my goods, let 
then his lord bring him to the 
church door, and drill through 
his ear with an awl, to witness 
that he be ever thenceforth a 
bondsman. 



Exodus xxii. 

1. If a man shall steal an ox or 
a sheep and kill it, or sell it, he 
shall restore five oxen for an ox, 
and four sheep for a sheep. 

2. If a thief be found breaking 
up, and be smitten that he die, 
there shall no blood be shed for 
him. 

3. If the sun be risen upon 



Alfred's Dooms. 

24. If any one steal another's 
ox, and slay or sell him, give he 
two for it, and four sheep for one. 
If he have not what he may give, 
be he himself sold for the fee. 

25. If a thief break a man's 
house by night and be there slain, 
be he not guilty of manslaughter. 
If he doeth this after sunrise he is 



THE KING f S LAW \S. 1 63 

him, there shall be blood shed guilty of manslaughter, and him- 
for him ; for he should make full self shall die, unless he did it of 

restitution; if he have nothing, necessity. If with him be i 
then shall he be sold for his theft. alive what he before stole, let him 

4. If the theft be certainly found pay for it twofold. 

in his hand alive, whether it be 26. If any man harm another 

ox, or ass, or sheep, lie shall man's vineyard, his acres, or any 
restore double. of his lands, let him make boot as 

5. If a man shall cause a field, men value it. 
or a vineyard, to be eaten, and 

shall put in his beast, and shall 
feed in another man's field; of the 
best of his own field, and of the 
best of his own vineyard, shall he 
make restitution. 

To the 8th verse, treating of property entrusted 
to another, Alfred's dooms add, " If it were live 
cattle, and he say that the army took it, or that it 
died of itself, and he have witness, he need not pay 
for it. If he have no witness, and they believe him 
not, let him then swear." We shall see that the 
obligation of an oath, which had no sanction attached 
to it apparently by West Saxon law till now, is 
very carefully enforced in a later part of the code. 
Alfred's dooms then omit from the 7th to the 15 th 
verse of the chapter inclusive, taking all the rest ; 
with the variation, however, as to pledges, that the 
Saxons are to return a man's pledged garment before 
sunset only " if he have but one wherewith to cover 
him/' 

The 3d and 6th verses of the 23d chapter are a 
puzzle to the King, so he substitutes dooms in his 
own language, which are certainly clearer than the 
Hebrew ones. 

M 2 



1 64 



LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREA T. 



Exodus xxiii. 3, 6. 

3. Neither shalt thou counte- 
nance a poor man in his cause. 

6. Thou shalt not wrest the 
judgment of thy poor in his cause. 



Alfred's Dooms. 

43. Doom thou very evenly ; 
doom thou not one doom to the 
wealthy, another to the poor ; nor 
one doom to the more loved, other 
to the more loathed doom thou not. 



Alfred adopts the next three verses in the following 
form : — 



Exodus xxin. 7, 8, 9. 

7. Keep thee far from a false 
matter, and the innocent and 
righteous slay thou not, for I will 
not justify the wicked. 

8. And thou shalt take no gift ; 
for the gift blindeth the wise, 
and perverteth the words of the 
righteous. 

9. Also thou shalt not oppress a 
stranger, for ye know the heart of 
a stranger, seeing ye were strangers 
in the land of Egypt. 



Alfred's Dooms. 

44. Shun thou aye leasings. 

45. A sooth fast man and guilt- 
less, slay thou him never. 

46. Take thou never meed 
monies, for they blind full oft wise 
men's thoughts, and turn aside 
their words. 

47. To the stranger and comer 
from abroad, meddle thou not 
with him, nor oppress thou him 
with no unright. 



Then, omitting all the rest of the Levitical law as 
given in this part of Exodus, as to cultivation of the 
land, the sabbatical year, sacrifices, and feasts, the 
dooms end with: — 

48. Swear ye never to heathen gods, nor in nothing call ye to them. 

The old Odin worship is not yet quite extinct in 
Wessex. 

Having finished his extracts from Exodus, in all 
forty-eight dooms, the King proceeds : — 

"These are the dooms that the Almighty God 
himself spake to Moses, and bade him to hold ; and 



THE KING >S LA IVS. 1 65 



when the Lord's only-begotten Son, our God, that is, 
Christ the healer, on middle earth came, He said that 
He came not these dooms to break, nor to gainsay, 
but with all good to do, and with all mild-heartedness 
and lowly-mindedness to teach them. Then after His 
throes, ere that His apostles were gone through all the 
world to teach, and while yet they were together, 
many heathen nations turned they to God. While 
they all together were, they send errand-doers to 
Antioch, and to Syria, Christ's law to teach. When 
they understood that they sped not, then sent they 
an errand-writing to them." Then follows verbatim 
James* epistle from the Jerusalem council to the 
Church at Antioch ; after which Alfred again goes 
on : " That ye will that other men do not to you, do 
ye not that to other men. From this one doom a 
man may think that he should doom every one 
rightly ; he need keep no other doom-book. Let 
him take heed that he doom to no man that he 
would not that he doom to him, if he sought doom 
over him." 

So far it would seem that the King has no doubt, 
or need of consultation with any one. These are, 
in his view, the dooms which the Almighty God 
himself has given to the king and people of England, 
as well as to the Hebrews of old. The remaining 
dooms stand on different ground. They are such as 
have been ordained by his forefathers and their wise 
men, with such additions and variations as he and his 
wise men approve. They are introduced thus : — 

" Since that time, it happened that many nations 



166 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

took to Christ's faith, and there were many synods 
through all the middle earth gathered, and eke 
throughout the English race they took to Christ's 
faith through holy bishops, and other wise men. 
They then set forth, for their mild-heartedness, that 
Christ taught as to almost every misdeed, that the 
worldly lords might, with their leave, without sin, for 
the first guilt, take their fee boot which they then ap- 
pointed, except for treason against a lord, to which 
they durst not declare any mild-heartedness, for that 
the Almighty God doomed none to them that 
slighted Him, nor Christ, God's Son, doomed none 
to him that sold Him to death, and He bade to 
love a lord as himself." Nevertheless, Alfred and 
his witan, by the 4th article of their code, modify 
this of the synods, and place the king and lords on 
the same footing as other freemen, by recognising 
the king's and lords' were-gild. " They then," the 
preface goes on, " in many synods set a boot for 
many misdeeds of men ; and in many books they 
wrote here one doom, there another." 

" I then, Alfred the King, gathered these together, 
and bade to write many of these that our forefathers 
held, those that to me seemed good : and many of 
those that seemed not good I set aside with my 
witan's council, and in other wise bade to hold them ; 
for that I durst not venture much of mine own to 
set in writing, for that it was unknown to me what 
of this would be acceptable to those that came after 
us. But those that I met with, either in my kinsman 
Ina's days, or in Offa's, king of Mercia, or in Ethel- 



THE KING >S LA IVS. 1 6 7 

bryte's, that first of the English race took baptism, 
those that seemed to me the rightest I gathered them 
herein, and let the others alone. I then, Alfred, King 
of the West Saxons, showed these to all my witan, 
and they then said that they all seemed good to them 
to hold." 

Then follow the collected dooms, approved by 
Alfred and his witan, from other sources, and " Ina's 
dooms " by themselves, at the end of the code. We 
have only room for a few of those which best 
illustrate the habits and society of the time. 

OF OATHS AND OF PLEDGES. 

" It is most needful that every man warily hold his 
oath and his pledge. If any man is forced to either 
of these in wrong, either to treachery against a lord, 
or other unright help, it is better to belie than to 
fulfil. If he, however, pledge what it is right for 
him to fulfil, and belie that, let him give with lowly- 
mindedness his weapon and his goods to his friends 
to hold, and be forty nights in prison in a king's 
town, and suffer there as the bishop assigns him ; 
and let his kinsmen feed him if he himself have no 
meat. If he have no kinsmen, or no food, let the 
king's reeve feed him. If one should compel him, 
and he else will not, if they bind him let him forfeit 
his weapons and inheritance. If one slay him, let 
him lye without amends. If he flee out ere the time, 
and one take him, let him be forty nights in prison, 
as he should at first. If, however, he escape, let him 
be looked on as a runaway, and be excommuni 



1 63 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

of all Christ's churches. If, however, another man 
be his surety, let him make boot for the breach of 
suretyship as the law may direct, and for the pledge- 
breaking as his confessor may shrive him." 

It is in this doom that imprisonment is first men- 
tioned in the Saxon laws. The doom for treason to 
which Alfred refers in his preface as the unpar- 
donable sin, and which in fact modifies that startling 
assertion, is, 

OF TREACHERY AGAINST A LORD. 

" If any one is treacherous about the king's life 
by himself, or by protecting outlaws, or their men, be 
he liable in his life, and in ail that he owns. If he 
will prove himself true, let him do it by the king's 
were-gild. In like manner we also appoint for all 
ranks, both churl and earl. He that is treacherous 
about his lord's life, be he liable in his life and all 
that he owns, or by his lord's were prove him true." 

Sanctuary in churches is carefully regulated, and 
" church-frith " established ; that is to say, if a man 
seek sanctuary for any crime which has not come 
to light, and confess it in God's name, "be it half 
forgiven." 

The settlement of the boot for offences against 
women form a prominent part of the code. From one 
of these dooms (8) it would seem that a nun might be 
married with the leave of the king or the bishop, as 
a fine of 120 shillings (half to go to the king, and 
half to the bishop and the lord of the convent) is 
inflicted for taking her without such leave. 



THE KING'S LA WS. 169 

The care which our forefathers took to enforce the 
responsibility of the several sections of society for 
their individual members, may be well illustrated 
by the dooms as to " kinless men." " If a man 
kinless of fathers kin fight, and slay a man, then 
if he have mother's kin, let them find a third of the 
w r ere, his guild brethren a third, and for a third let 
him flee. If he have no mother's kin, let his guild 
brethren pay half, and for half let him flee. If a 
man slay a kinless man, let half his were be paid 
to the king, half to his guild brethren." 

The scale by which the different classes of society 
were assessed may be gathered from the doom for 
housebreaking (40), by which burglary in the king's 
house is fixed at one hundred and twenty shillings, 
in an archbishops ninety shillings, a bishop's or 
alderman's sixty shillings, a twelve hynde man's 
thirty shillings, a six hynde man's fifteen shillings, 
a churl's five shillings ; the boot being in each in- 
stance double if the offence is committed " while the 
army is out," or during Lent. In laws of earlier date 
the same penalties had been fixed for offences against 
the king and against bishops. Now the king has 
established his supremacy in every way. 

It has been said that Alfred and his witan first 
established a system of entail in England. There is 
no foundation for this statement except the doom, 
that if a man have inherited book-land u he must not 
give it from his kin, if there be writing or witness 
that it was forbidden by those that first gained it ;" 
a somewhat slender ground for the theory. 



i?o LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

But. the strangest glimpse which we get through 
these laws of the state of society of a thousand years 
since is in the doom as to feuds. It is too long to 
quote, but in substance amounts to this : a man who 
has a feud with another may not fight him, if he 
finds him at home, without first demanding right 
of him ; even then, he may not fight him for seven 
days if he will remain within. If he come upon him 
abroad unawares, he may fight him if he will not 
give up his weapons ; if he will, then he must " hold 
him thirty nights and warn his friends of him " 
(probably that they may ransom him, but this is 
not stated). A man may fight for his lord, and a 
lord for his man, without feud. He may also fight 
for his born kinsman without feud, except against 
his lord, "that we allow not" He may also without 
feud fight any man whom he finds insulting his wife, 
daughter, sister, or mother. 

Holidays, or Massday Festivals, are provided for 
all freemen ; twelve days at Yule, " and the day that 
Christ overcame the devil, and St. Gregory's day 
(probably because of Alfred's reverence for Pope 
Gregory), and a fortnight at Easter, St. Peters and 
St. Paul's days," in harvest the full week before St 
Mary's mass, All-Hallows day, and four Wednesdays 
in the four Ember weeks. Serfs or "theow men," 
however, do not fare so well, being left to " whatever 
any man give them for God's name." 

No less than thirty-three dooms are given up to 
the valuing of wounds of all kinds, the boots ranging 
from two shillings for a finger-nail, to eighty shillings 



THE KING f S LA J VS. 1 7 1 

for an arm, and one hundred shillings for the t 

of the neck. A man guilty of slander shall lose 

his tongue, or pay full were-gild 

Amongst the dooms of " Ina my kinsman," which 
are appended to Alfred's, we may note that as to 
working on Sundays. If a theow work on Sunday 
by his lord's order, the lord must pay thirty shillings 
for wite ; if without his lord's order, "let him pay 
hide gild," or, in other words, be flogged. If a free- 
man work without his lord's order, he must forfeit 
his freedom, or pay sixty shillings, and a priest must 
forfeit double. 

A chance of escape is left, however, for the theow 
who has become liable to " hide gild" under the 
doom on " Church scots:" "If any man forfeit 
his hide and run into a church, let the swingeing 
(whipping) be forgiven him." 

For the protection of forests it is enacted, that if 
any man burn a tree in a wood and it be found out, 
44 let him pay full wite of sixty shillings, because fire is 
a thief ';" but, if any one fell many trees in a wood, 
" let him pay for three trees, each with thirty shillings. 
He need not pay for more of them, however many 
there might be, because the axe is an informer, not a 
thief. But if any one cut down a tree under which 
thirty swine may stand, let him pay sixty shillings wite." 

The doom against lurking in secret places, already 
noticed, is re-enacted in a modified form : if any far- 
coming man, or stranger, journey through a wood out 
of the highway, and neither shout nor blow horn, he 
may be slain. 



172 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

By such dooms, then, did the King and his witan 
endeavour to weld into the everyday life of a rude 
people, accustomed to settle all disputes and diffi- 
culties by free fighting, that one governing doom 
of the whole code, " That ye will that other men 
do not to you, do ye not that to other men." It may 
be impossible to suppress a smile at the strange 
company in which the golden rule finds itself in the 
code of Alfred and his wise men. The task was by 
no means an easy one, and they have, at any rate, 
the credit of putting it distinctly forward and doing 
their best upon it. Have any of our law-makers 
from that time to this aimed at a higher ideal, or 
worked it out more honestly according to their 
lights ? If so, let them cast the first stone at "Alfred's 
dooms." 

Mr. Thorpe supposes that the same code, with the 
dooms of Offa, instead of those of Ina, appended, 
was passed by the witan of Mercia, and put in force 
in that country. The code was also modified for the 
new Danish kingdom of East Anglia. 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE KING'S JUSTICE. 

"And he set judges in the land, throughout all the fenced cities, city by 
city, and said to them, Take heed what ye do : for ye judge^ not for 
man, but for the Lord, and He is with you in the judgment '." 

THE one special characteristic of Englishmen (in- 
dubitable and indisputable till of late), reverence 
for law and the constable's staff, if it had ever 
taken root at all in the country before Alfred's time, 
had disappeared during the life-and-death struggle 
with the Northmen. When "the army" left Mercia, 
and went to settle in their own country, the state 
of things which they left behind them in Wessex 
was lawless to the last degree. The severe penalties 
provided in Alfred's laws for brawling in the king's 
hall, or before aldermen in the mote, for disturbing 
the folk-mote by weapon drawing, for fighting in 
the houses of freemen or churls, show what a pass 
things had come to. 

On the other hand, it is equally clear that this 
readiness to appeal to the strong hand on all occa- 
sions was not altogether without justification, for the 
ordinary tribunals were fallen into utter disrepute, 
scarcely even attempting to do justice between man 



174 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

and man. The aldermen of the shires, hereditary 
rulers, responsible indeed to the King, but for most 
practical purposes independent, were the chief judges, 
as well as the chief executive officers, of the kingdom. 
They had systematically neglected, and so had be- 
come utterly incompetent to fulfil, their judicial duties. 
There was scarcely an alderman who could read the 
text of the written laws in his own language, or who 
had any but the most superficial acquaintance with 
the common law, which was even then a precious 
inheritance of the tribes of the great German stock. 
These judicial duties had consequently fallen into 
the hands of their servants, " vice-domini," and other 
inferior officers. How these and others carried matters, 
and what sort of justice the people got under them, 
we may conjecture from the statement in Andrew 
Home's " Miroir des Justices,'' that Alfred had to 
hang forty-four of them for scandalous conduct on 
the judgment-seat. One Cadwine was thus hanged, 
because on the trial of Hachwy for his life he first 
put himself on the jury, and then, when three of 
the jury were still for finding a verdict of not guilty, 
removed these and substituted three others, against 
whom he gave Hachwy no right of challenge, and 
sentenced him to death on their verdict. Another, 
Freberne, was hanged for sentencing Harpin to death 
when the jury were in doubt, and would not find a 
verdict of guilty; and Segnar, because he condemned 
Elfe to death after he had been acquitted. Dr. 
Pauli and others have doubted this evidence, deeming 
such measures absolutely inconsistent with Alfreds 



THE KING'S JUSTICE. 173 

character, and it is certainly difficult to believe that 
he would have so punished men for mistakes, as is 
the case with some of the forty-four cases cited in 
the " Miroir des Justices." But I own it seems to 
me that Cadwine and Freberne most thoroughly 
deserved hanging, and that Alfred was just the king 
to have given them their deserts. Unfortunately, 
the treatise which he is said to have written " against 
unjust judges," and his " reports of cases in his time" 
(acta magistratum sitontm), which were extant it 
seems in Edward IV.'s reign, are lost. We can get 
no nearer the truth, therefore, on this particular 
question, but have the best evidence as to the 
thorough reform which he introduced in the whole 
administration of justice. 

The first and most important of his reforms was, 
the severance of the executive and judicial functions. 
But even this step was taken without haste, or in- 
justice of any kind. It was only after patient sifting, 
and very gradually, that the aldermen and earls were 
superseded. The hard-handed, truculent, old warriors, 
who had stood so stoutly by him through many a 
hard day's fighting, were dear to the King, and were 
treated by him with the utmost consideration.- He 
would give the chiefs who had led men at Ashdown, 
and Wilton, and Ethandune, every chance ; would 
spend himself in the effort to make them equal to their 
duties ; would allow them to do anything, except 
injustice to God's poor, and his. For, as Asser tes- 
tifies, " he showed himself a minute investigator of 
the truth in all his judgments, and this especially 



i-6 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

for the sake of the poor, to whose interests, day and 
night, among other duties of this life, he was ever 
wonderfully attentive. For in the whole kingdom 
the poor beside him had few or no protectors. For 
all the powerful and noble men of the nation had 
turned their thoughts to worldly rather than to 
heavenly things, and each was bent more on his own 
profit than on the public good." 

There is, in the same author, a very characteristic 
account of Alfred's endeavour to educate his alder- 
men and earls as judges, which is for us full of 
humour, almost reaching pathos. Alfred, in all the 
early years of his reign, was in the habit of inquiring 
" into almost all the judgments w r hich were given in his 
absence throughout all his realm, whether they were 
just or unjust. If he perceived there was iniquity 
in those judgments, he would summon the judges, 
either himself, or through his faithful servants, and 
ask them mildly why they had judged so unjustly — 
whether through ignorance or malevolence, whether 
for the love or fear of any, or hatred of others, or, 
also, for the desire for money." What happened in 
the latter case Asser does not tell us, but the " Miroir 
des Justices " may suggest. If, however, " the judges 
acknowledged that they had given such judgments 
because they knew no better, he would discreetly and 
moderately reprove their inexperience and folly in 
such words as these : ' I wonder, truly, at your rash- 
ness, that, whereas by God's favour and mine yon 
have occupied the rank and office of the wise, you 
have neglected the studies and labours of the wise. 




Sedulously bent on acquiring learning. — P. 177. 



THE KING'S JUSTh 177 

Either, therefore, at once give up the discharge of 
these duties which you hold, or ehdeavoui more 

zealously to study the lessons of wisdom. Such are 
my commands.' At these words, the aldermen, 
earls, and prefects would tremble, and endeavour to 
turn all their thoughts to the study of justice ; 
that, wonderful to say, almost all his earls, prefc 
and officers, though unlearned from their cradles, 
were sedulously bent on acquiring learning, choosing 
rather laboriously to acquire the knowledge of a new 
discipline than to resign their functions. But if any 
one of them, from old age or slowness of mind, were 
unable to make progress in liberal studies, the King 
commanded his son, if he had one, or one of his 
kinsmen, or, if there were no other person to be had, 
one of his, own freedmen or servants whom he had 
before advanced to the office of reading, to recite 
Saxon books before him day and night, whenever he 
had any leisure. Then these men would lament, with 
deep sighs in their inmost hearts, that in their youth 
they had never attended to such studies, and would 
bless the young men of our days who happily could 
be instructed in the liberal arts, while they would 
execrate their own lot that they had not learned 
these things in their youth, and now, when they 
are old, though willing to learn them, the)* are 
unable." 

The stout old warriors, " sedulously bent on ac- 
quiring learning," there in the England o{ a thousand 
years ago, with one of the King's young freedmen 
— a kind of pupil-teacher, not without a dash of 

S.L. viii. N 



178 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

priggishness, we may fancy — reading to each of the 
most stolid of them, day and night, so that they can 
scarcely eat or sleep in peace ! Before Bishop Asser, 
no doubt, they only " lamented with deep sighs," 
and " blessed the young men of our day I" Those 
w r ho have ever attended one of the schools started 
near some great railway work in our time for the 
navigators, may get some idea of the toil of those 
ancient aldermen, earls, prefects, and officers of Alfred's. 
There is something very touching in the struggle of 
a great strong man over his primer, and the blotted 
pot-hooks which he slowly stumps out on a tormented 
copy-book with his huge, horny hand. The aldermen 
generally, let us hope, came soon to the conclusion 
that presiding in courts of justice was not their true 
function. In any case it seems certain that Alfred 
effectually separated the judicial and executive duties 
of his officers, and appointed a set of judges whose 
functions coincided to some extent with those of our 
judges of assize : officers who were sent through the 
shires to see that justice was being done, and to over- 
haul and report on the decisions of the county courts. 
But when his new system had been established, a 
heavy burden still lay on the King. The old, disorderly 
habits were not to be shaken off at once. The suitors 
often " perversely quarrelled in the courts of his earls 
and officers, to such an extent that hardly any one of 
them would admit the justice of what had been decided 
by the earls and prefects, and, in consequence of this 
pertinacious and obstinate dissension, all desired to 
have the judgment of the King, and both sides strove 



THE KINi : } S j I f S TIC E. 1 79 



at once to gratify this desire." Thus it was in suits 
where both plaintiff and defendant believed in their 
own case. u But if any one was conscious of injustice 
on his side in a suit, though by law or agreen 
he were compelled to go before the King, yet \ 
his own good-will he never would consent to go. For 
he knew that in the King's presence no part of his 
wrong would be hidden, and no wonder, for the King 
was a most acute investigator when appealed to to 
pass sentence, as he was in all other things." 

But reform in his law courts was only a small 
portion of Alfred's work. The old framework of 
society had been rudely shaken, and nothing short of 
a thorough re-organization would restore peace and 
order, and give his new courts and officers a fair 
chance. Accordingly the King set to work on the 
same principle as had guided him in his law refoi 
He has a strong conservative reverence for that which 
his forefathers have established, and will preserve it 
wherever possible. Thus he accepts the division of 
the kingdom into shires, which has sometimes been 
attributed to him, but which, it is certain, was much 
older than his day; but the boundaries of shi. 
hitherto uncertain, and varying from time to time. . 
now laid down precisely, after a general survey oi the 
country, upon which it has been supposed that Dome-- 
day-book was founded. This survey was engrossed 
and kept at Winchester, and called the Roll o\ Win- 
chester. By it the shires, and their subdivisions of 
hundreds or wapentakes, were carefully set uch 

as the)- remain to this day, as territorial dn 

N 2 



180 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

Alfred gave each hundred its court, and there seems 
reason to believe that from this court of the hundred 
the first appeal lay to a court of the "trything," a 
district composed of several hundreds. There were 
generally, it is said, three trythings in every county, 
of which traces still remain in the three ridings of 
Yorkshire, the lathes of Kent, and the three districts 
of Lincolnshire, Lindesey, Kesteven, and Holland. 
The evidence, however, as to these " trythings" is 
weak, and does not affect any shire in Wessex proper, 
the old West Saxon kingdom. The hundreds again 
he subdivided into tythings, each of which was repre- 
sented by a head-borough, or chief man of the tything. 

Every English householder then who claimed to 
be a " liege man," or one who was living according to 
law, was a member of a tything, and of a hundred, if 
living in the country, or of a guild if living in a town ; 
and householders had to keep " household rolls " of 
their servants. Thus, in one way or another, every 
man was recognised, caught hold of by the law, and 
taught his duties and obligations as a citizen. If 
there were a man who belonged to no hundred, 
tything, or guild, and whose name was on no house- 
hold roll, he, it seems, would be held an outlaw and 
common enemy, whose life and goods' were at the 
mercy of any one who chose to take them, or, in the 
expressive phrase of the time, he " wore the wolfs 
head." 

Under this framework of hundreds and tythings a 
stringent system of suretyship was established. Thus 
if a crime were committed within a tything, the head- 



THE KING'S JUSTICE. 181 

borough had to undertake at once for the production 

of the criminal. If he escaped, the tything had a 
certain number of days given them, within which he 
must be produced for trial. If they could not produce 
him, the tything had yet a way of clearing them- 
selves. If the head-borough and two "chief pledges," 
or leading men of the tything in which the offence 
had been committed, could get the head-borough and 
two chief pledges of the three neighbouring tythings 
— twelve good men in all — to join with them in 
swearing that, in their conscience, the tything was 
innocent of any knowledge of, or privity with, the 
crime or the flight, the society was cleared. Other- 
wise the tything had to pay the fine awarded by law 
for the offence. This might be levied in the first 
instance on the goods of the culprit, but, on failure of 
these, the balance had to be made up by a levy on 
the whole tything. Besides this, every member of 
the tything had to clear himself by oath of any 
privity with the fault or flight, and to swear that he 
would bring the culprit to trial whenever he could 
find him. 

The liability of a householder to answer for any 
stranger who might stop at his house has already 
been noticed. If such a stranger, merchant, or way- 
faring man, came to be suspected of any crime and 
could not be found, he whose guest he had last been 
was summoned to account for him. If he had not 
entertained the stranger for more than two nights, he 
might clear himself by oath; but if the stranger had 
lodged with him three nights, he was bound to pro- 



[82 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

duce him, or answer, and pay "weregild," or "wite," 
for him, as for one of his own family. 

This mutual liability, or suretyship, was the pivot 
of all Alfred's administrative reforms. It was an old 
system known by the common name of frank-pledge, 
but now new life was put into it by the King, and in 
a short time it worked a very remarkable change in 
the whole of his kingdom. Merchants and others 
could go about their affairs without guards of armed 
men. The forests were emptied of their outlaws, 
kinless men, and Danes, and left to the neat-herds 
and swine-herds and their charges. Confidence and 
security succeeded to the distrust and lawlessness 
which had threatened the realm with hopeless an- 
archy at the end of the great war. Later chroniclers, 
such as Ingulf and Malmesbury, have preserved the 
stories which the English people used fondly to tell of 
the state of their country in the time of their hero 
king : how virgins might travel without fear of insult 
from one end of England to the other ; how if a way- 
farer left his money all night on the highway, he might 
come next day and be sure of finding it untouched ; 
how the King himself tried the experiment of hang- 
ing up gold bracelets at cross-roads, and no man 
wished, or dared, to lay hands on them. The like 
stories had been current in earlier times of King 
Edwin, and were also told of Normandy under the 
rule of Rollo in these same years. We need not 
attach any undue weight to them, but the fact 
remains on evidence, which has been allowed to be 
trustworthy by competent students of all schools, that 



THE KING'S JUSTICE. 

within the lives of one generation Alfred converted 
the West Saxons from a lawless, brawling race 

semi-barbarians into a peaceable and law-abiding 

nation. 

This frank-pledge system, which was worked in the 
country districts through the local divisions of tythings 
and hundreds, was worked in the towns by the ma- 
chinery of the guilds. There is no more interesting 
piece of social history than this of the Saxon guilds, 
but it is quite beyond our province here to touch upon 
it. All we are concerned with is the guild amongst the 
West Saxons at this precise period. They were insti- 
tutions combining the objects of benefit clubs, in- 
surance societies, and trades-unions. As a rule they 
were limited to members of one trade or calling, or at 
least to members of the same class of society; for there 
were guilds of priests and thanes, as well as guilds 
of weavers and masons. The insurance extended to 
mutual support and maintenance during life, and to 
the costs of burial and of masses for the soul after 
death. This was the organization which the system 
of frank-pledge laid hold of, and probably developed, 
for the guilds in the times nearer the Norman con- 
quest had extended so as sometimes to embrace all 
the citizens of a town in one society. Whatever 
the size of the guild might be, the king's officer, the 
town reeve, looked to the officers of the guild in his 
town, as the shire reeve looked to the head-borough 
of the tything in the county, for the production of 
offenders and the payment of were and witc. The 
political education of the whole people was thus 



1 34 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

carried on in shire and town, though the right of 
every freeman to attend the Great Council had neces- 
sarily fallen into abeyance. The result is well summed 
up by Mr. Pearson : — 

" What is essential to remember is, that life and 
property were not secured to the Anglo-Saxon by the 
State, but by the loyal union of his free fellow- 
citizens : that honour and courage were expected 
from neighbours, as readily as amongst ourselves 
from the police, and that free co-operation secured 
the weak from the strong, provided for the destitute 
and orphan, and mitigated the ruinous losses against 
which no care can provide. The system may have 
been — must have been — imperfect in its workings. 
But the question is not one merely of material results : 
it is rather of moral education, and I believe the 
Saxon guilds are unmatched in the history of their 
times, as evidences of self-reliance, of mutual trust, 
of patient self-restraint, and of orderly love of law 
among a young people." 1 

The laws or customs of frank-pledge, enforced by 
courts-leet in every hundred, were undoubtedly what 
are now called heroic remedies. That they interfered 
with the individual freedom of the subjects of the 
king in a very real sense it is impossible to deny, 
but it is equally true that they did most effectually 
the work which they were meant to do, which I take 

i Pearson's " History of England during Early and Middle Ages," 
vol. i. p. 276. I am glad to take this opportunity of again owning my 
great obligations to this work. The chapters xvi. to xx. are quite 
invaluable studies of England and the English during the Anglo-Saxon 

period. 



THE KING'S JUSTICE. 185 

to be the real test of remedial measures, heroii 
humdrum. 

Sir John Spelman, looking round him at the con- 
fusions of the England of his day, mourns over the 
disuse of the courts-leet and the institution of frank- 
pledges, which used to be "the whole and sole admi- 
nistration of justice criminal which was in the king- 
dom." " Had they been continued in practice," the 
old knight thinks, "according to their ancient usage, 
they had been to this day not unprofitable to the 
commonwealth. For instance, the continual trouble 
and contention that is daily raised between town and 
town about the settling of people chargeable, or feared 
to be chargeable; the universal complaint of the 
licentiousness and unruliness of servants, who (for the 
liberty they now have of changing at their pleasure) 
will stay in no place, nor serve, but upon such con- 
ditions as to work and wages as is grievous to masters, 
and gives trouble to all the justices in the kingdom 
to regulate ; the pester and annoyance of the king- 
dom with such a surcharge of vagrant and disorderly 
persons, that more and more now-a-days abound, and 
many other such like inconveniences, had all been 
avoided or in great part remedied by the observance 
of the law of frank-pledge." Still he owns that, in a 
commonwealth so increased as it was in his day, it 
would be in vain to attempt to bring it back. In an 
age of electric telegraphs and railways it would s< 
at first sight scarcely worth while to dwell upon it at 
all. At the same time, unless the world is essen- 
tially different from the world in which Alfred, lived 



1S6 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

and reigned, and men and women are neither the 
children of, or kin to, the men and women over 
whom he ruled — which we have no reason for believ- 
ing — there must be something answering, or analogous, 
to this custom or institution of frank-pledge, whicK 
we might be all the better for getting at. Alfred had 
his problems of anarchy, widespread lawlessness, ter- 
rorism, to meet. After the best thought he could give 
to the business, he met them just thus, and prevailed. 
Like diseases call for like cures ; and we may assume 
without fearthat a remedy which has been very success- 
ful in one age is at least worth looking at in another. 

We too, like Alfred, have our own troubles — our 
land-questions, labour-questions, steady increase of 
pauperism, and others. In our struggle for life we fight 
with different weapons, and have our advantages of 
one kind or another over our ancestors ; but when all 
is said and done there is scarcely more coherence 
in the English nation of 1869, than in that of 
1079. Individualism, no doubt, has its noble side ; 
and " every man for himself" is a law which works 
wonders ; but we cannot shut our eyes to the fact 
that under their action English life has become more 
and more disjointed, threatening in some directions 
altogether to fall to pieces. What we specially want 
is something which shall bind us more closely to- 
gether. Every nation of Christendom is feeling after 
the same thing. The need of getting done in some 
form that which frank-pledge did for Alfred's people 
expresses itself in Germany in mutual-credit banks, 
open to every honest citizen ; in France, in the 



THE KING'S JUSTICE. 187 

productive associations of all kinds; at home in our 
co-operative movement, and trades-unions. 

No mere machinery, nothing that governments or 
legislatures can do in our day, will be of much help, 
but they may be great hindrances. The study of 
the modern statesman must be how to give such 
movements full scope and a fair chance, so that 
the people may be able without let or hindrance 
to work out in their own way the principle which 
Alfred brought practically home to his England, that 
in human society men cannot divest themselves of 
responsibility for their neighbours, and ought not to 
be allowed to attempt it. 

To recapitulate, then, shortly — the reforms which 
the King effected in the administration of justice, 
and what we may fairly call the resettlement of the 
country, were almost all adaptations or develop- 
ments of what he found when he came to the throne. 
The old divisions of shires were carefully readjusted 
and divided into hundreds and tythings. The alder- 
man of the shire still remained the chief officer, 
but the office was no longer hereditary. The 
King appointed the alderman, of earl, of the 
shire, who was called the " king's alderman," or 
u comes." He was president of the shire gemot, or 
council, and chief judge of the county court, as well 
as governor of the shire, but was assisted, and pro- 
bably controlled, in his judicial capacity, by justices 
appointed by the King, and not attached to the shire 
or in any way dependent on the alderman. The 
officers called in the Chronicles " vice-domini," who 



1 83 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

had come to be simply the servants and nominees 
of the alderman, exercising indifferently judicial 
and executive functions, were abolished, and one 
officer substituted for them, the reeve of the shire, 
or sheriff. The sheriff was the king's officer, who 
carried out the decrees of the courts, levied the were- 
gild and other fines, and had generally the duty of 
seeing that the kings justice was promptly and 
properly executed ; but had no judicial functions 
whatever. The hundreds and tythings were repre- 
sented by their own officers, and had their own 
hundred-courts, and courts-leet. These courts seem 
to have had some trifling criminal jurisdiction, but 
were chiefly assemblies answering more to our grand 
juries, and parish vestries. All householders were 
members of them, and every man thus became 
directly responsible for keeping the king's peace. 
Through their officers — " head-boroughs," " bors- 
holders," or by whatever other name they went — 
offenders were apprehended, fines levied, the army 
recruited ; in short, the whole civil business of the 
country transacted. A simple but effective organiza- 
tion for a commonwealth in the condition of the 
England of the ninth century, as was abundantly 
proved by the immediate results. The fact that 
much of it remains to our own day shows that it had 
worth in it for other and different times. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THE KING'S EXCHEQUER. 

" lie becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand, but the hand of the 

diligent maketh rich. 
" Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in the 

streets. 
" The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that luatereth shall be 

watered also himself." 

Of all the difficult questions which meet the student 
of King Alfred's life and times, there is none more 
puzzling than this of his exchequer. We have 
already passed in review a portion of the work which 
he managed to perform, and much yet remains for us 
to glance at. We know that he rebuilt the fortresses, 
created a navy composed of ships of a more costly 
kind than had yet been in use, and re-organized his 
army so as constantly to have one-third of the fr 
men capable of carrying arms ready for immediate 
service, and on full pay. Our own experience tells 
us that these are three as costly undertakings 
any which a reforming king could take in hand. 
Where then did the necessary funds come from ? 

The rebuilding of fortresses, and marching against 
an enemy in the field, were indeed, as we have seen. 



190 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

two of the three duties to which all land granted to 
individuals was subject ; but this rule would scarcely 
seem to have included such fortresses as were royal 
property. These, which were undoubtedly very nu- 
merous, the King probably rebuilt at his own charges. 
In the same way, the military service which freemen 
were bound to render did not include garrison duty, 
or the three months' yearly training under arms, 
which Alfred enforced after the first great invasion of 
Wessex. The reconstruction of the fleet, too, was an 
unusual expense, which must probably have fallen on 
the King almost exclusively. Mr. Pearson says, " The 
church, the army, the fleet, the police, the poor-rates, 
the walls, bridges, and highways of the country, were 
all local expenses, defrayed by tithes, by personal 
service, or by contributions among the guilds." But 
this statement can scarcely refer to so early a time as 
the ninth century ; and Alfred's own words, and the last 
and most authentic portion of Asser's life, lead to the 
inference that much of- the military cost of all kinds 
was borne by the King himself. To the outlay for 
these purposes, we must add the maintenance of his 
court, in a style of magnificence quite unusual before 
his time ; the payment of the army of skilled artificers 
which he collected, and of his civil officers and min- 
isters ; the entertainment of strangers ; his foreign 
embassies ; his schools, the ecclesiastical establish- 
ments which he founded, endowed, or assisted ; and the 
relief of the poor. These must have amounted to very 
large sums annually ; while we should have expected 
that the sources of the King's wealth would have been 



THE KING'S EXCHR \^\ 

almost dried up by the long and devastatin 
Alfred indeed himself states, in the preamble to his 
will, that he and his family had been despoiled of 

great part of their wealth " by the heathen folk." The 
fact, however, remains, that all these things were done 
out of the King's revenues, and there is no hint in 
chronicler, or law, or charter, that he ever oppressed 
his people by any such exactions, legal or illegal, as 
have generally been enforced by magnificent monarchs, 
from Solomon downwards. 

To meet this expenditure, the King's income was 
derived from three sources : public revenue, crown 
lands, and his private property. The public revenue 
arose from several sources, amongst which we may 
reckon probably dues in the nature of customs, pay- 
able by merchants at the several ports of the king- 
dom, and tolls payable by persons trading at the 
king's markets, though the authentic notices of the 
payment of any such in Alfred's time are very meagre. 
Then the Icing succeeded to the lands of those who 
died kinless, and probably to their goods if they were 
intestate. Treasure-trove also belonged to him. Hut 
far more important than these must have been the 
revenue derived from the were-gild, and other fines 
imposed by the laws for damage to person and 
property. 

The care with which these "boots" are fixed in 
Alfred's laws, in which the details of the compensa- 
tions awarded in such cases occupy the greater part 
of the code, would indicate the revenue from th< I 
have been considerable. It will have been Ian 



1 92 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

at the time when it was most needed, in the first 
years of peace, before the old violent habits of the 
people had given way under the even and strong 
administration of the King. But even of this revenue 
the King only got a portion. For instance, the were- 
gild or compensation for manslaughter was (it seems) 
divisible into three portions : the first part only, or 
" frith-boot/' was paid to the King for the breach of his 
peace; the second part, or " man-boot," went to the lord 
as compensation for the loss of his man ; where the 
dead man had no lord, or was a foreigner, two-thirds 
went to the King : the third part, called " mag " (or 
tribe) boot, or " ern gild " was paid to the dead man's 
family, as compensation for the injury caused to them 
by his loss. Of the remaining boots, it is probable 
that the King got a less share of those inflicted for 
injuries to the person not ending fatally, as the claim 
of the sufferer in such cases would be paramount to 
any other ; while of those inflicted for such offences 
as perjury, slander, brawling, he would probably take 
the greater part. Still, on the most extravagant 
estimate, the income arising from all these sources 
must have been very trifling when compared with the 
royal outgoings. 

The crown lands proper were no doubt of consider- 
able extent and value, but there is little evidence 
to show of what they consisted. Reading, Dene, 
and Leonaford, are royal burghs mentioned in the 
Chronicles which are not included amongst Alfred's 
devises, and were probably crown lands. Alfreds 
own lands or family estates, of which he was absolute 



THE KING'S EXCHEQUER. , 93 



owner, and able to dispose by his will, must have been 
very extensive. He had estates in every shire in 
Wessex, except that portion of Glostershire which 
was included in the old West Saxon kingdom. Per- 
haps, however, at the date of his will the whole of 
Glostershire might have been handed over to Ethel red 
the Alderman of Mercia, and the royal estates there 
given as part of Ethelswitha's dower. The royal pro- 
perties lay most thickly in Wilts, Hants, and Somerset, 
in which three shires we find upwards of twenty spe- 
cified in the will. Lands in Kent and Sussex are also 
devised, so that there was no part of the new kingdom 
in which Alfred was not a large proprietor. But how 
these lands were cultivated, what part of the produce 
was sold, and what forwarded in kind to meet the 
consumption of the court, and of that host of soldiers 
and mechanics for whom the King undertook to find 
bread and meat and beer, as one of the most im- 
portant of his royal functions, there is no evidence 
to show. 

But if we can do little but conjecture more or less 
confidently as to the sources or amount of Alfreds 
revenue, we know in remarkable detail how he spent 
it, from the account given in what Dr. Pauli and 
others consider the most authentic part of Asser's life. 

The good bishop's preamble to this portion of his 
work tells how the King, after the building and 
endowing of his monasteries at Athelney and Shah 
bury, began to consider "what more he could do 
augment and show forth his piety. That which he 
had begun wisely, and thoughtfully conceived for 



S.L. VIII. 



194 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

the public good, he adhered to with equally bene- 
ficial result, for he had heard it out of the book of 
the law that the Lord had promised to restore him 
tenfold, and he knew that the Lord had kept His 
promise, and had actually restored him tenfold. 
Encouraged by which example, and wishing to outdo 
his predecessors in such matters, he vowed humbly 
and faithfully to devote to God half his services both 
day and night, and also half of all his wealth, such 
as lawfully and justly came annually into his posses- 
sion. And this vow, as far as human judgment can 
discern, he skilfully and wisely endeavoured to fulfil. 
But that he might, with his usual caution, avoid that 
which Scripture warns us against, ' if you offer aright, 
but do not divide aright, you sin,' he considered how 
he might divide aright that which he had vowed to 
God ; and as Solomon had said, i the heart or counsel 
of the king is in the hand of God/ he ordered with 
wise foresight, which could come only from above, 
that his officers should first divide into two parts the 
revenues of every year. When this division was made 
he assigned the first half to worldly uses, and ordered 
that one-third of it should be paid to his soldiers, 
and also to his ministers and nobles who dwelt at 
court, where they discharged divers duties ; for so the 
King's household was arranged at all times into three 
classes. His attendants were thus wisely divided into 
three companies, so that the first company should be 
on duty at court for one month, night and day, at 
the end of which time they returned to their homes 
and were relieved by the second company. At the 



THE KING'S EXCHEQUER 195 

end of the second month, in the same way, the third 
company relieved the second, who returned to their 
homes, where they spent two months, until their turn 
for service came again. The third company al 
place to the first, in the same way, and also spent 
two months at home. Thus was the threefold division 
of the companies arranged at all times in the royal 
household. To these, therefore, was paid the first 
of the three portions, to each according to their 
respective dignities and services ; the second to the 
workmen whom he had collected from every nation, 
and had about him in large numbers, men skilled in 
every kind of construction ; the third portion was 
assigned to foreigners, who came to him out of every 
nation far and near ; whether they asked money of 
him or not he cheerfully gave to each with wonderful 
munificence, according to their respective merits, as 
it is written, ' God loveth a cheerful giver.' " 

" But the second part of his revenues, which came 
yearly into his possession, and was included in the 
receipts of the exchequer, as we mentioned above, 
he gave with ready devotion to God, ordering his 
ministers to divide it carefully into four parts. The 
first part was discreetly bestowed on the poor of every 
nation that came to him, and on this subject he said 
that, as far as human judgment could guarantee, the 
advice of Pope Gregory should be followed, 'Give 
not much to whom you should give little, nor littk 
whom much, nor something to whom nothing, nor 
nothing to whom something.' The second of the 
four portions was given to the two monasteries which 

O 2 



196 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

he had built, and to those who therein dedicated 
themselves to God's service. The third portion was 
assigned to the schools which he had studiously- 
collected together, consisting of many of the nobility 
of his own nation. The fourth portion was for the 
use of all the neighbouring monasteries in all Saxony 
and Mercia, and also during some years, in turn, to 
the churches and servants of God dwelling in Britain, 
Cornwall, Gaul, Armorica, Northumbria, and some- 
times also in Ireland ; according to his means he 
either distributed to them beforehand, or afterwards, 
if life and success should not fail him," meaning, 
probably, that the King, when he was in funds, made 
his donations to monasteries at the beginning of the 
financial year — if otherwise, at the end. 

The roundabout way in which the old churchman 
and scholar thus puts before us the picture of his 
truth-loving friend and king, preaching economy and 
order to his people by example, brings it home to us 
better than any modern paraphrase. Asser sees the 
good work going on under his eyes, the orderly and 
wise munificence, and the well-regulated industry of 
the King's household, giving tone to all the house- 
holds in the realm; nobles and king's thegns, justices, 
officers, and soldiers, coming up month by month, 
and returning to their own shires, wiser and braver 
and thriftier men for their contact with the wisest 
and bravest and thriftiest Englishman. Everything 
prospers with him ; for all his outlay, Asser sees and 
writes : u the Lord has restored him tenfold." 

Rulers and workers the like of this king are indeed 



THE KING'S EXCHEQUER. 197 

apt to get large returns. The things of this world 
acknowledge their master, and pour into his lap full 
measure, heaped up, and running over. But the ten- 
fold return brings its own danger with it, and too 
often the visible things bind the strong man. " This 
is also vanity, yea, it is a sore travail. . . . When goods 
increase, they are increased that eat them ; and what 
good is there to the owners thereof saving the behold- 
ing of them with their eyes. . . . All the labour of 
man is for his mouth, and yet the appetite is not 
filled. . . There is an evil which I have seen under 
the sun, and it is common among men. A man to 
whom God hath given riches, wealth, and honour, so 
that he wanteth nothing for his soul of all that he 
desireth, yet God giveth him not power to eat thereof, 
but a stranger eateth it : this is vanity, and it is an evil 
cfisease." So mourns the wise king who has bowed 
before the "tenfold return," and for whom his wealth 
has become a mere dreary burden. 

If we would learn how the Saxon king kept the 
dominion which the Hebrew king lost over the things 
which "the Lord was restoring him tenfold," we shall 
perhaps get the key best from himself. " Lord," Alfred 
writes in his Anglo-Saxon adaptation from St. Au- 
gustine's " Blossom Gatherings," "Thou who hast 
wrought all things worthy, and nothing unworthy . . . 
to Thee I call, whom everything loveth that can love, 
both those which know what they love, and those 
which know not what they love : Thou who art the 
Father of that Son who has awakened and yet wakens 
us from the sleep of our sins, and warneth us that we 



198 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT, 

come to Thee. For every one falls who flees from 
Thee, and every one rises who turns to Thee, and 
every one stands who abides in Thee, and he dies 
who altogether forsakes Thee, and he quickens who 
comes to Thee, and he lives indeed who thoroughly 
abides in Thee. Thou who hast given us the power 
that we should not despond in any toil, nor in any 
inconvenience, as is no wonder, for Thou well rulest, 
and makest us well serve Thee. . . . Thou hast well 
taught us that we may understand that that was 
strange to us and transitory which we looked on as 
our own — that is, worldly wealth ; and Thou hast also 
taught us to understand that that is our own which 
we looked on as strange to us — that is, the kingdom 
of heaven, which we before disregarded. Thou who 
hast taught us that we should do nought unlawful, 
hast also taught that we should not sorrow though our 
substance waned to us. . . . Thou hast loosed us from 
the thraldom of other creatures, and always preparest 
eternal life for us, and preparest us also for eternal 
life. . . . Hear me, Lord, Thy servant ! Thee alone 
I love over all other things ! Thee I seek ! Thee 
I follow ! Thee I am ready to serve ! Under Thy 
government I wish to abide, for Thou alone reignest." 

A strange, incomprehensible, even exasperatin 
kind of man, this king, to the temper and understand- 
ing of our day, which resents vehemently the ex- 
pression of any such faith as his. How often during the 
last few years have we not heard impatient or con- 
temptuous protests against the well-meaning perhaps, 
but shallow, and often vulgar, persons who are ashamed 



& 



THE KING'S EXCHEQUER. 

or afraid of doubt, and insist on using this sort of 
precise language about matters which will not bear it, 
of which nothing certain is, or can be, known. But 
they are for the most part poor creatures (when not 
parsons, and therefore tied to their professional shib- 
boleths), fools or bigots, useless for this world and in 
their relations with visible things, where we can test 
them, whatever they may be as to any other, of which 
neither they or we can know anything. Do any of 
our best intellects, statesmen, scholars, scientific men 
— any of those who lead the thought and do the 
work of our time — talk thus ? 

But this straightforward, practical English king, 
the hardest worker probably who ever lived in these 
islands, who was the first statesman, scholar, scientific 
man, of his day — who fought more pitched battles than 
he lived years, and triumphed over the most for- 
midable leaders Europe could produce in those wild 
times — who re-organized, and put new life into, every 
institution of his country, and yet attended to every 
detail of business like a common merchant — is pre- 
cisely the man who ought to have been free from this 
kind of superstition. It is a hard saying in the 
mouth of such a ruler of men, this of " Under Thy 
government I wish to abide, for Thou alone reign est." 
This can scarcely refer to the " tendency by which all 
men strive to fulfil the law of their being." What does 
it mean ? 



CHAPTER XVIL 

THE KING'S CHURCH. 

" Is not the Lord your God with you ? and hath He not given you rest on 
every side ? Now set your heart and your soul to seek the Lord your 
God : arise, therefore, and build ye the sanctuary of the Lord God." 

" By the end of the seventh century," says Mr. Free- 
man, " the independent insular Teutonic Church had 
become one of the brightest lights of the Christian 
firmament.' , The sad change which had come over 
her in the first half of the ninth century has already 
been noticed. She had entirely ceased to be a mis- 
sionary church, and even in the matter of learning 
had so deteriorated, that Alfred himself writes in his 
preface to the Anglo-Saxon version of Gregory's 
Pastoral Care : " So clean was learning now fallen off 
amongst the English race, that there were very few on 
this side the Humber who were able to understand 
their service in English, or even to turn a written 
letter from Latin into English, and I think that there 
were not many beyond the Humber. So few there 
were of them, that I cannot think of even one on 
the south of the Thames when I first took to the 
kingdom." At the same time Alfred also remembers 
that when he was young he had seen, " ere all within 
them was laid waste and burnt up, how the churches 



THE KING'S CHURCH. 201 

throughout all the English race stood filled with 
treasures and books, also a great multitude of G 
servants, though they knew very little use of tli 
books, for that they could not understand anythi 
of them. M 

At the time of which Alfred is writing, the begin- 
ning of his own reign, it would seem too that the c. 
from which hitherto the superior clergy, the monks 
and canons of the cathedrals and abbeys, had been 
recruited, had ceased to supply a sufficient number to 
fill up vacancies. Their places were being filled by 
the parochial clergy, or mass priests, who were of a 
much lower class socially. For the monks, with the 
exception of foreigners (of whom there had always been 
some in every considerable monastic institution), were 
as a rule of the noble class, while the mass pru 
were taken from the class of ceorls, who were still 
indeed an independent yeomanry, and owners of their 
own land, but in other respects little removed from 
the servile class. That this lack of candidates for 
orders was felt before the first invasion appears from 
an incident which happened in the year 870, just 
before the first great invasion of Wessex and Alfred's 
accession, and consequently before any cathedral or 
abbey in Wessex had been plundered or burnt In 
that year, Ceolnoth, Archbishop of Canterbury! died, 
and " King Ethelred and Alfred his brother took 
Ethelred, Bishop of Winchester, and appointed him 
Archbishop, because formerly he had been a monk 
that same minster of Canterbury." Now in Ceolnoth's 
time there had in one year been a great mortality 



LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 



in Canterbury amongst the monks, so that five only 
were left for the work of the Cathedral. He was ob- 
liged therefore to bring in some of " the priests of his 
vills, that they should help the few monks who sur- 
vived to do Christ's service, because he could not so 
readily find monks who would of themselves do that 
service." Nevertheless Ceolnoth had been always 
anxious to get rid of the mass priests, and the chronicler 
reports him as having said, " So soon as God shall give 
peace to this land, either these priests shall be monks, 
or from elsewhere I will place within the minster as 
many monks as may do the service of themselves." 
The speech was more probably Ethelred's, who at 
any rate, as soon as he was established in the Arch- 
bishopric, took counsel how he might expel the clerks 
that were therein. This however he could not effect, 
" for that the land was much distressed by frequent 
battles, and there was warfare and sorrow all his time 
over England, so that the clerks remained with the 
monks," and he died in 888 without having accom- 
plished his object. 

This state of things was of course made far worse 
by the war. That which was now the West Saxon 
kingdom contained at least five dioceses, besides that 
of Canterbury ; of these Winchester, Sherborne, Wells, 
were the chief, all of which had been traversed and 
plundered at one time or another. The material 
prosperity had followed the higher life of the Church, 
and there was as much need of restoring - the mere 
outward framework of churches and monasteries, as 
that of city walls and fortifications. 



THE KING'S CHURCH. 203 

To this the King turned his attention soon after the 
peace of Wedmore. We have heard already that of 
the half of his revenue which he dedicated to religious 
uses, one-fourth was expended on the two monasteries 
of his own foundation, and another fourth on the 
monasteries in Wessex and the other English king- 
doms. The erection of these two monasteries was the 
first ecclesiastical work he took in hand. The one for 
monks was built at Athelney, in fulfilment of a vow 
which he had made there during his residence on the 
island. A bridge " laboriously constructed " was now 
thrown over the morass, at the western end of which 
was erected a strong tower of beautiful work, to guard 
the approach. The monastery and outbuildings occu- 
pied the whole island, and being built before the King 
had collected his army of artisans, was of wood, the 
church small, and supported on four strong pillars of 
wood, and surrounded by four smaller cells or chancels. 

But it was easier to build the monastery than to fill 
it as the King would wish it filled. " At first," says 
Asser, " he had no one of his own nation, noble and 
free by birth, who was willing to enter the monastic 
life, except children, who could neither choose good 
or avoid evil, in consequence of their tender years. 
For during many previous years, the love of a mo- 
nastic life had utterly decayed from that nation, as 
well as from many other nations, though many 
monasteries remained in the country. As yet no one 
directed the rule of that kind of life in a regular way, 
for what reason I cannot say, either from the invasi 
of foreigners, which took place so frequently both by 



204 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

sea and land, or because that people abounded in 
riches of every kind, and so looked with contempt on 
the monastic life." Alfred was consequently at once 
driven abroad, not only for learned monks who were 
able to occupy high places, and to instruct those who 
should instruct his people in all kinds of learning, but 
even for the ordinary brethren. For Athelney he got 
as first Abbot, John, priest and monk, an old Saxon 
by birth, and soon after him, certain monks and 
deacons from beyond the sea. But the monastery 
filled so slowly, that the King was soon driven to 
procure " as many as he could of the Gallic nation." 
Of these, some were children, for whom as well as 
for natives a school was established at Athelney, and 
they were taught there. Asser himself had seen a 
youth of pagan birth who had been educated in the 
monastery, and was of great promise. 

Alfred's second monastery was one for nuns, built 
by the eastern gate of the town of Shaftesbury. The 
first abbess was Ethelgiva, his second daughter, who 
must have been placed in that position while almost 
a child, unless, indeed, the monastery was not built 
till a much later period than Asser indicates. In 
any case, there seems to have been no difficulty in 
finding nuns amongst the Saxon nobles, for many 
noble ladies became bound by the rules of monastic 
life, and entered the convent at Shaftesbury with the 
King's daughter. Besides an original endowment of 
lands, these two foundations were permanently sus- 
tained by one-eighth part of the royal revenues. 

One other monastery Alfred appears to have com- 



THE KING'S CHURCH. 205 

menced at Winchester, called the new monastery, 
which was the latest and most magnificent of his 
ecclesiastical buildings. It was intended as his burial- 
place, but was not finished at the time of his death. 
The chapel was so near the cathedral church of 
Winchester, that the chanting of one choir could be 
heard in the other building, which seems to have 
caused much bitterness between the bishop and abbot 
and their respective staffs. To this may be attributed 
the hard terms imposed by the bishop on Edward 
the elder, Alfred's son and successor, who, being 
anxious to complete his father's work, and to add 
suitable offices to the new monastery, was charged 
by the bishop a mark of gold for every foot of land 
he was obliged to buy. These are Alfred's only 
ecclesiastical foundations, though he was a munificent 
benefactor of others, such as Sherborne and Durham 
cathedrals, and the abbeys of Glastonbury and Wilton, 
and appropriated one-eighth of his income for distri- 
bution to any that had need. 

But the building, restoring, and maintaining the 
outer fabric of churches, monasteries, and abbeys, was 
only the easiest part of the King's work. The dis- 
cipline and services of the Church, and the habits 
and manners of monks and priests, had fallen into 
lamentable confusion. To restore these, Alfred 
searched his own and neighbouring kingdoms, and 
gathered round him a band of learned and pious 
churchmen, of whom he was able to speak with 
honourable pride towards the end of his life : u It is 
unknown how long there may be so learned bishops 



2c6 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

as, thank God, are now everywhere." We shall have 
to notice these friends of the King by themselves ; 
here it is only necessary to say that they taught in the 
schools, translated books, restored Church discipline, 
presided in synods, all under the King's eye, and so re- 
stored the character of the Church of England, that 
once again " the clergy were zealous in learning and 
in teaching, and in all their sacred duties, and people 
came from foreign countries to seek instruction." 

One of the first effects of this revival was to attract 
the notice and approval of the Pope Martinus, who, 
either in the year 882 or 883, sent an embassy to Alfred 
with presents, including " a part of the rood on which 
Christ suffered." The King in return, in 883, sent 
presents to the Pope by the hands of Sighelm and 
Athelstane, two of his nobles, who also presented the 
suit of their King and people, that the Saxon schools 
at Rome, which were supported by the bounty of his 
father Ethelwulf, and in the church attached to which 
Buhred, his unhappy brother-in-law, was buried, might 
be freed from all toll and tribute. Martinus granted 
the request, and died in the next year. But his death 
does not seem to have affected Alfred's relations with 
the head of the Church. In many subsequent years 
English embassies to Rome are mentioned, those, for 
instance, of Ethelhelm, Alderman of Wilts in 887, and 
Beocca in 888, with whom journeyed the widowed 
Ethelswitha, Alfred's sister, formerly the lady of 
Mercia, to make her grave with her husband. She 
never reached Rome, but died on the journey at Pavia. 
Indeed, the note in the Saxon Chronicle for the year 



THE KING'S CHURCH. 207 



8S9, "in this year there was no journey to R01 

cept that King Alfred sent two couriers with 
would lead to the inference that an embassy \ 
regularly sent in ordinary years to carry the offer- 
ings of the King and people to the shrine of St. Peter. 
Beyond this interchange of courtesies, however, and 
the annual gifts, it does not appear that the relations 
between the Pope and the English Church became at 
all more intimate in Alfred's time. In some respects, 
undoubtedly, he asserted his authority over the na- 
tional Church, and his superiority to its highest 
ministers, more decidedly than any of his prede- 
cessors. In his laws, the second commandment was 
virtually restored to the Decalogue ; the King's were- 
gild was made higher than an archbishop's, reversing 
the older law : the fine for breaking the King's bail 
was five pounds' weight of coin ; for breaking an 
archbishop's bail, three pounds only : for breaking 
into the King's house, 120 shillings; into an arch- 
bishop's, ninety. Again, the way in which the King 
addresses and employs his bishops, carrying them 
about with him, and using them as translators of 
the Scriptures, or of any other work which he desires 
to put within reach of his people, shows that he 
claimed them as his officers, and that they acknow- 
ledged his authority. It is said that he left all the 
sees of Wessex vacant for the last years o( his reign, 
and only under the care of the Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, and that the Pope did not even remoust; 
with him, but on his death threatened his SU( 
with excommunication unless the)- were filled up. 



208 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

From this fact Spelman argues that Alfred's "life 
and ways were not pleasing to the fathers at Rome." 
But this statement does not rest on any trustworthy 
authority, and it seems far more probable that Alfred 
lived on excellent terms with contemporary popes. 
They, for their part, seem to have wisely followed 
the liberal policy indicated in Gregory's answers to 
Saint Augustine, and to have allowed the Church 
in the distant island to develop in its own way. 
On the other hand, the King evidently entertained, 
and expressed on all occasions, very real and deep 
reverence for the acknowledged head of the Church, 
and worked in such noble and perfect harmony 
with his own bishops, that no questions seem ever 
to have arisen in his reign which could bring the 
spiritual and temporal powers into collision. His 
own humble and earnest piety, and scrupulous obser- 
vance of all the ordinances of the Church, united with 
extraordinary firmness and power of ruling men, no 
doubt contributed to this happy result. 

And so State and Church worked in harmony side 
by side, exercising a concurrent jurisdiction of a very 
remarkable kind. Every crime was punishable both 
by the civil and spiritual tribunals. The King and 
witan, or the judge and jury, or homage (as the case 
might be), punished the offender for the damage he 
had done to his fellow-citizens, or to the common- 
wealth, by fines, or mutilation, or imprisonment. But 
the criminal was not thus fully discharged. The moral 
sin remained, with which the State did not profess to 
deal, but left it to the spiritual powers, aided by the 



THE KING'S CI 209 



provisions of the code. Accordingly, for every cril 
there was also a penance, to be fixed by bi 
priest. In short, Alfred and his witan believed that 
sin might be rooted out by external san 

ilties affecting body and goods. The Church, 
they thought, was the proper authority, the power 
which could do this work for the commonwealth, and 
accordingly to the Church the duty was entrusted. 

Looked at with the experience of another 1,000 
years, the wonder is, not that the attempt did not 
succeed, but that it worked even for a generation or 
so without bringing the two powers into the fiercest 
conflict. The singleness of mind and heart, and 
earnestness of Alfred, must have inspired in great 
measure his aldermen, judges, bishops, all men in 
responsible offices. So he could put forth his ideal, 
simply and squarely, and expect all Englishmen to 
endeavour to realize that — with results even there and 
then of a very surprising kind. For through the mi 
of 1,000 years we do here actually see a people trying, 
in a somewhat rude and uncouth way, but still 
honestly, to found their daily life on the highest ideal 
they could hear of — on the divine law as they ackfl 
ledged it — of doing as they would be done by. 

Rome was not the only or the most distant foreign 
Church to which Alfred sent embassies. He had 
made a vow, before the taking and rebuilding of 
London, that, if he should be successful in that und 
taking, he would send gifts to the Christian churcl 
in the far East, of which uncertain rumours and I 
ditions still spoke throughout Christendom. The 

S.L. VIII. p 



2io LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

apostles St. Thomas and St. Bartholomew had 
preached the Gospel in India and founded these 
churches, it was said, and it was to them that Alfred, 
in performance of his vow, despatched the same Sig- 
helm and Athelstan who were the bearers of his gifts 
and letters to Pope Martinus. They would seem, 
indeed, to have gone on from Rome in the year 883, 
by what route we know not, or how long they were 
upon their mission, or how they sped, save only that 
they came back to their King, bringing greetings 
from those distant brethren, and gifts of precious 
stones and spices in return for his alms. These 
Alfred distributed amongst his cathedrals, in some of 
which they were preserved for centuries. Such was 
the first intercourse between England and the great 
empire which has since been committed to her in the 
East. St. Thomas' Christians are still to be found in 
Malabar and elsewhere. 

Asser also mentions letters and presents sent by 
Abel, the patriarch of Jerusalem, to his king. It does 
not appear, however, that Alfred sent any embassy to 
the Holy Land. Dr. Pauli suggests that these gifts 
might have been brought to England by the survivor 
of three Scotch pilgrims, whose names a romantic 
legend connects with the English king. Dunstane, 
Macbeth, and Maclinman, were the three Christians 
in question, who, despairing, it would seem, of the 
Church in their own country, put to sea in a frail 
boat, patched together with ox-hides and carrying a 
week's provisions, and landed on the coast of Corn- 
wall. From thence they made their way to Alfred's 



THE KING'S CHURCH 211 



court, and were hospitably entertained by him, 
his wont was, and forwarded on their journey, fl 
which one of them only returned. 

Asser speaks also, in general language, of daily 

embassies sent to the King by foreign nations, "from 
the Tyrrhenian Sea to the farthest end of Ireland." 
Of these, however, we have no certain account, but 
enough remains to show how the spirit of Alfred 
yearned for intercourse with Christians in all parts of 
the known world, and how the fame of his righte 
government, and of his restored Church, was going 
forth, in these years of peace, to the ends of the earth. 
But the greatest work of that Church, as of all true 
churches, was the education of the people at home. 
Besides the schools attached to his foundations of 
Athelney and Winchester, Alfred established many 
schools for the laity in different parts of his kingdom. 
One was attached to the court, and in it the children 
of his nobles, ministers, and friends were educated 
with his own children, and "were loved by him with 
wonderful affection, being no less dear to him than 
his own." They were educated carefully in good 
morals, and in the study of their own language, the 
King himself constantly superintending, and taking 
part in the teaching. To use his own words, he was 
desirous " that all the free-born youth of his people 
who had the means should persevere in learning so 
long as they had no other duties to attend to, until 
they could read the English Scriptures with flue; 
and such as desired to devote themselves to the 
service of the Church might be taught Latin." 

P 2 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE KING'S FRIENDS. 

"As the judge of the people is hi?nself, so are his officers : and what man the 
ruler of the city is, such are all they that dwell therein." 

We have already incidentally come across several of 
the statesmen and ecclesiastics who were singled out 
and employed by Alfred, and must now endeavour to 
make some closer acquaintance with the men through 
whom the great reform of the English nation was 
wrought out under the great king. Unfortunately, the 
memorials of them are scanty, for they were a set of 
notable workers, worthy of all honour, and of the 
attentive and respectful regard even of the nineteenth 
century. They were of all races whom the King could 
get at, and of all ranks. Prince, noble, or peasant, rough 
skipper, or studious monk, or cunning craftsman, it 
was the same to him. The man who could do his 
work, this was all he cared for, and, when he had 
found him, set him forthwith to do it, with whatever 
promotion, precedence, or other material support 
might best help him. 

John, the old Saxon, sometimes called John of 
Corvey, priest and monk, a stern disciplinarian and 
courageous person, we have already heard of as first 



THE KING'S FRIENI 

Abbot of Athelney, having also the superi 

of the theological school attached to the K 
monastery there. Alfred himself has studied un< 
him, and so has come to discern the man's faculty. 
For he was the King's mass-priest while Athelney 
was building, and helped him in the translation 
"The Hinds' Book" (Gregory's pastoral) into the 
English tongue. Abbot John had a difficult, even a 
perilous time of it there, in the little island, rem 
from men, hemmed in by swamp and forest, where 
his monks have no orchards or gardens to till, and his 
boys no playground. The King's piety, and love of 
his place of refuge, have for once outweighed his 
sagacity, or he had not chosen the island for such 
purposes. Englishmen cannot be got to live there, 
and the Franks and others are jealous of their abbot. 
Brooding over it in that solitude, at last a priest and 
deacon and two monks, all Franks, plot his murder. 
John the Abbot goes constantly at midnight to pray 
before the high altar by himself. So the plotters bribe 
two foreign serving-men to hide in the church armed, 
and there slay him ; after which they were to drag out 
the body, and cast it before the house of a certain 
woman of evil repute. The men on the night appointed 
accordingly rushed on the old man as he was kneeling 
before the altar. But he, hearing their approach, u being 
a man of brave mind, and as we have heard not un- 
acquainted with the art of self-defence, if he had not 
been the follower of a better calling/' rose up 
he was wounded, and strove with them, shouting out 
that they were devils. The monkt;, alarmed by the 



214 LIFE 01 ALFRED THE GREAT. 

cries, rush in in time to carry their abbot off badly 
wounded, the conspirators mingling their tears with 
those of the other monks. In the confusion the 
assassins escape for the moment, but in the end all 
those concerned were taken and put in prison, " where 
by various tortures they came to a disgraceful end." 

Nothing more is known of Abbot John's troubles 
or successes, and we may hope that he got his 
monastery and school into working order, and lived 
peaceably there for the rest of his days. 

When a boy, Alfred, travelling across France with his 
father, had become acquainted, amongst other eminent 
scholars, with Grimbald, a priest skilled in music, and 
learned in Holy Scripture, and in all doctrine and 
discipline of the Church. He has risen since that 
time to the dignity of Provost of St. Omers, within the 
jurisdiction of Fulk, Archbishop of Rheims. To this 
prelate Alfred sends an embassy both of ecclesiastics 
and laymen, bearing presents, and praying that Grim- 
bald may be allowed to come to England, to assist in 
building up and restoring the Church there. The 
answer is still extant. Addressing "the most Christian 
King of the English,' , Fulk, "Archbishop of Rheims 
and the servant of the servants of God," congratulates 
Alfred on the success of his temporal arms, and his zeal 
for enlarging the Church by spiritual weapons. The 
Archbishop prays incessantly that God will multiply 
peace to the King's realm in his days, and that the 
ecclesiastical orders (" which have, as ye say, in many 
ways fallen away, whether by the constant inroads of 
heathen men, or because the times are feeble by age, 



THE KING'S FRIENl 

or through the neglect of bishops, or ignorance of the 
inferior clergy") may by his diligence be reforn 
ennobled, extended. The Archbishop acknowled 

has evidently been elated by, the King's desire t<> im- 
port doctrine and discipline from the seat of Saint 
Remigius, "which, we are constrained to boast, has 
always excelled in worship and doctrine all other 
French churches." Amongst other presents (for which 
grateful thanks) "ye have sent us noble and very 
staunch hounds, though carnal, for the controlling 
those visible wolves, with great abundance of which, 
amongst other scourges, a just God has afflicted our 
land ; asking of us in return hounds, not carnal but 
spiritual, not such, however, as those of which the 
prophet has said ' many dogs, not able to bark,' but 
such as shall know well how for their Lord to bay in 
earnest (magnos latratus fwidcrc), to guard His ilock 
with most vigilant watchfulness, and to drive far away 
those most cruel wolves of unclean spirits, who are 
the betrayers and devourers of souls. Out of such 
spiritual watchdogs ye have singled out and asked 
from us one of the name of Grimbald, priest and 
monk, to whom the universal Church bears record, 
she who has nourished him from his childhood in 
the true faith, advancing him after her manner to the 
dignity of the priesthood, and proclaiming him suit 
to the highest ecclesiastical honour, and well fitted to 
teach others. This same man has been a m< iful 

coadjutor to us, and we cannot without sore affli< I 
suffer him to be parted from us by SO vast of 

land and sea. But charity taketh no note i 



216 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

nor faith of injury, nor can any earthly distance keep 
apart those whom the chain of a true affection joins. 
Wherefore we grant this request of yours most will- 
ingly." Such is the reply, much abridged, of the 
worthy Archbishop, evidently a Christian prelate with 
large leisure, some sense of humour, and a copious 
epistolary gift, who is impressed in his continental 
diocese with the vigour and greatness of his corre- 
spondent, and " desires that his royal state, piety, and 
valour may continue to rejoice and abound in Christ, 
the King of kings and Lord of lords." 

Grimbald, thus introduced, remains at first by 
Alfred's side as one of his mass-priests, assisting 
the King in his translations. Afterwards he becomes 
professor of divinity in one of the new schools, 
probably at Oxford, and then abbot of the new 
monastery at Winchester. There has been much 
learned controversy as to Grimbald's connexion with 
Oxford, in consequence of an interpolation in one 
of the early manuscripts of Asser's life, which pur- 
ports to give an account of a violent quarrel which 
soon arose between Grimbald and the scholars whom 
he found there, and who refused to submit to the 
" laws, modes, and forms of prelection," which he 
desired to introduce. Their own, they maintained, 
had been established and approved by many learned 
and pious men, notably by St. Germanus, who had 
come to Oxford, and stopped there for half a year 
on his way to preach against the heresies of Pelagius. 
The strife ran so high that the King himself went to 
Oxford at Grimbald's summons, and " endured much 



THE KING'S FRL 217 

trouble" in hearing the arguments on both 
Having listened " with unheard of humility, the K 
exhorted them, with pious and wholesome admo- 
nition, to cherish mutual love and concord, and 
decided that each party should follow their own 
counsel and keep their own institutions." The wh 
story is probably the invention of a later century, 
when the claims of the two great universities to 
priority of foundation were warmly discussed. There- 
is no proof that Oxford existed as a place of edu- 
cation before Alfred's time, nor is it certain that 
he founded schools there, though the "Annals of 
Winchester," and other ancient and respectable au- 
thorities, so assert, and that he built and endowed 
three colleges, "the greater hall, the lesser hall, and 
the little hall" of the university, of which halls Uni- 
versity College is the lineal survivor. " Grimbald's 
crypt," however, may still be seen under the chancel 
of St. Peter's Church, the oldest in Oxford, and it 
seems more than probable that in some of the manu- 
scripts of Asser's life, now lost, there was an account 
of the building of the original church on this 
by Grimbald, and its consecration by the Bishop of 
Dorchester. The present church and crypt are un- 
doubtedly of later date, but the tradition is str 
enough to support the arguments of the team 
Those who are interested in the controversy will 
find it elaborately summed up in Sir J. Spelma 
Third Book. In any case, it is certain that 
had a mint at Oxford, even if he founded no 
schools there. 



218 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

Of English churchmen, Plegmund, Alfred's Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, a Mercian by birth, is the 
most distinguished — said indeed to have been the 
first man of his time "in the science of holy learning. ,, 
He escaped from the sack of his monastery at the 
time of the Danish invasion of Mercia, in 876, and 
lived as a hermit in an island four and a half miles 
from Chester for fourteen years, till sought out by 
Alfred and promoted to the primacy in 890, on the 
death of Archbishop Ethelred. It is more probable, 
however, that he was constantly with Alfred much 
earlier than this, for he is specially named as his 
instructor, and seldom quitted the Court till after 
his lord's death. He went, however, to Rome in 
891 to be consecrated by Pope Formosus ; and again 
a second time, after the body of Formosus had been 
disinterred and thrown into the Tiber by Stephen his 
successor, to be re-consecrated. He survived Alfred 
for twenty-three years, and seems to have ruled the 
English Church wisely, till his own death. 

Another Mercian who was much consulted by 
Alfred, and who appears to have frequently visited 
him in Wessex, was Werfrith, Bishop of Worcester, 
to whom the King's celebrated preface to Gregory's 
" Pastoral Care " is addressed, and who, by Alfred's 
desife, translated the Dialogues of the same Pope into 
Saxon. He was the foremost helper of Alderman 
Ethelred and his wife, the Lady of Mercia, Ethelfleda, 
Alfred's daughter, and a vigorous organizer and go- 
vernor of the things and persons of this world ; ready, 
however, as a loyal son of holy Church to extend the 



THE KING 'S FRIENDS. 



219 



rights of the see of Worcester whenever opportunity 
might offer. A most characteristic instance of this 
instinct of Bishop Werfrith's occurs in the report of a 
sitting of the Mercian witan, first translated by Dr. 
Pauli from the Saxon. It is, in fact, the report of an 
important parliamentary debate of 1,000 years back, 
curious as a contrast to a Hansard's debate of to-day 
in more ways than one. It can scarcely be abridged 
without damage, and is as follows : — 

"In the name of Christ our Lord and Saviour. 
After eight hundred and ninety-six years had passed 
since His birth, in the fourteenth Indiction, the Ealder- 
man Ethelred summoned the Mercian witan, bishops, 
nobles, and all his forces, to appear at Gloster ; 
and this he did with the knowledge and approbation 
of King Alfred. There they took counsel together 
how they might the most justly govern their com- 
munity before God and the world, and many men, 
clergy as well as laity, consulted together respecting 
the lands, and many other matters which were laid 
before them. Then Bishop Werfrith spoke to the 
assembled witan, and declared that all forest land 
which belonged to Wuduceastre, and the revenues 
of which King Ethelbald once bestowed on Worcester 
for ever, should henceforth be held by Bishop Wer- 
frith for wood and pasture ; and he said that the 
revenue should be taken partly at Bislege, partly at 
Aefeningas, partly at Scorranstane, and partly at 
Thornbyrig, according as he chose. Then all the 
witan answered that the Church must make good 
her right as well as others. Then Ethelwald (Ealder- 



22o LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

man ?) spoke : he would not oppose the right, the 
Bishops Aldberht and Alhun had already negotiated 
hereon, he would at all times grant to each church 
her allotted portion. So he benevolently yielded to 
the bishop's claim, and commanded his vassal Ecglaf 
to depart with Wulfhun, the priest of the place 
(Gloster ? — properly, the inhabitant of the place). 
And he caused all the boundaries to be surveyed by 
them, as he read them in the old books, and as King 
Ethelbald had formerly marked them out and granted 
them. But Ethelwald still desired from the bishops 
and the diocese, that they should kindly allow him 
and his son Alhmund to enjoy the profits of the land 
for life ; they would hold it only as a loan, and no 
one might deprive them of any of the rights of 
pasture, which were granted to him at Langanhrycge 
at the time when God gave him the land. And 
Ethelwald declared that it would be always against 
God's favour for any one to possess it but the lord of 
that church to whom it had been relinquished, with 
the exception of Alhmund ; and that he, during his 
life, would maintain the same friendly spirit of co- 
operation with the bishop. But if it ever happened 
that Alhmund should cease to recognise the agree- 
ment, or if he should be pronounced unworthy to 
keep the land, or thirdly, if his end should arrive, 
then the lord of the church should enter into posses- 
sion, as the Mercian witan had decided at their 
assembly, and pointed out to him in the books. This 
took place with the concurrence of the Ealderman 
Ethelred, of Ethelfleda, of the Ealdermen Ethulf, 



THE KING J S FRIENDS. a 2 r 

Ethelferth, and Alhhelm, of the Priests Ednoth, 
Elfraed, Werferth, and Ethelwald, of his own kins- 
men, Ethelstan and Ethelhun, and likewise of Alh- 
mund his own son. And so the priest of the place 
and Ethelwald's vassal rode over the land, first to 
Ginnethlaege and Roddimbeorg, then to Smececumb 
and Sengetlege, then to Heardanlege also called 
Dryganleg, and as far as Little Naegleslege and the 
land of Ethelferth. So Ethelwald's men pointed out 
to him the boundaries as they were defined and 
shown in the ancient books." 

To Bishop Werfrith's zeal and ability it is most 
probably owing that the reaction towards paganism 
in Mercia, which followed the Danish occupation, 
made little progress. All traces of it seem to have 
disappeared before Alfred's death, when Central Eng- 
land had become as sound as Southern England. 

The only native of Wessex who would seem to 
have won a place for himself in that little band of 
reforming churchmen was Denewulf, Bishop of Win- 
chester, an honoured and faithful counsellor of the 
King, who is commonly supposed to be the neat-herd 
with whom Alfred became acquainted in S/S, in 
Selwood Forest. If this be so, he could scarcely have 
been a wholly uneducated man even then, as Alfred 
required scholarship in his bishops, and Denewulf was 
consecrated before the end of 881. The story rests 
principally on the authority of the Chronicle of 
Florence of Worcester, compiled towards the end 
of the eleventh century. 

But the friend of Alfred's of whom we know most is 



222 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

Asser Menevensis, a Welsh monk, the author of the 
Life so often quoted ; and who, during the last 
sixteen or seventeen years of his life, was the most 
intimate friend and adviser of the King. Somewhere 
about the year 884 Asser was either summoned by 
Alfred, or came of his own accord, from the monas- 
tery of St. David's, on " the furthest western coast of 
Wales/' to the royal residence at Dene, in Sussex, 
where Alfred was then staying with his court. It 
would seem that the Welsh prince, Hemeid, who had 
sworn allegiance to Alfred to obtain protection against 
the six sons of Rotri, was in the habit of plundering 
the • monastery, and had recently driven Novis, Arch- 
bishop of St. David's, Asser's kinsman, out of his 
diocese. Novis and his kinsman will no doubt have 
reasoned, that a king familiar with the parables 
would be wroth at such conduct in a fellow-servant : 
and that he who was so bent on establishing mo- 
nasteries as schools and refuges for learning in his 
own kingdom, will not suffer this kind of doings 
by one whom he is protecting. Whether summoned 
or not, Asser was received with open arms by the 
King, who knew him for a learned and pious man, 
and at once admitted him to familiar intercourse. 
Soon the King began to press him earnestly to 
devote himself to his service, and to give up all he 
possessed on the west bank of the Severn, promising 
to recompense him amply in his own dominions. 
" I replied," Asser continues, " that I could not with- 
out thought, and rashly, promise such things, for it 
seemed to me wrong to leave those sacred places 



THE KING 'S FA/ENDS. 223 

where I had been bred and educated, and had 
ceived the tonsure and ordination, for the sake of any 
earthly honour or promotion. Upon this he said, 
1 If you cannot altogether accede to my request, 
at least let me have your service in part ; spend six 
months of the year with me, and the other six in 
Wales/ I answered that I could not even promise 
this hastily, without the advice of my friends. But at 
length, when I saw that he was very anxious for my 
service (though I know not why), I promised that if 
my life were spared I would come back in six months 
with such a reply as would be welcome to him, as well 
as advantageous to me and my friends. With this 
answer he was content, and when I had given him a 
pledge to return at the appointed time, on the fourth 
day I left him, and returned on horseback towards my 
own country. After my departure I was stricken by 
a violent fever at Winchester, where I lay for a year 
and a week, night and day, without hope of recovery. 
At the appointed time, therefore, I could not redeem 
my pledge of returning to him, and he sent messengers 
to hasten my journey and ask the cause of the delay. 
As I was unable to ride to him I sent a messenger to 
tell him the cause of the delay, and to assure him that 
if I recovered I would fulfil what I had promised. So 
when my sickness left me, by the advice of all my 
friends, for the benefit of our holy place and of all who 
dwelt therein, I did as I had promised the King, and 
devoted myself to his service on condition that I 
should remain with him six months in every year, 
either continuously, if I could spend six months in 



224 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

every year with him continuously, or alternately, three 
months in Wales, and three in England." Asser 
accordingly went to the court at Leonaford, where the 
King received him honourably, and he remained eight 
months, " during which I read to him whatever books 
he liked, and such as we had at hand ; for this is his 
regular custom both night and day, amid his many 
other occupations of mind and body, either himself to 
read books or to listen while others read them." 
Asser, however, finds that the six months' compact 
is likely to be forgotten, and reminds the King of it 
frequently. " At length, when I had made up my 
mind to demand leave to go home, he called me to 
him at twilight, on Christmas eve, and gave me two 
documents in which was a long list of all the things 
which were in two monasteries, called in Saxon 
Angusbury and Banwell, and at that same time 
delivered to me those two monasteries with all those 
things which were in them, and a silken pall of great 
value, and a load of incense as much as a strong man 
could carry, adding that he did not give me these 
trifling presents because he was unwilling hereafter to 
give me greater ; for in course of time he unexpectedly 
gave me Exeter, with all the church property which 
belonged to him there and in Cornwall, besides daily 
gifts without number, of every kind of worldly wealth, 
which it would be too long to recount lest I should 
weary my readers. But let no one suppose that I 
have mentioned these presents here for the sake of 
glory or flattery, or to obtain greater honour. I call 
God to witness that I have not done so, but that I 



THE KING y S FRIENl 2 2 5 

might testify to those who are ignorant how liberal he 
is in giving. He then at once gave me leave to ride 
to these monasteries, and then to return to my own 
country." So Asser was installed as a sort of bis! 
in partibits to his own countrymen in Cornwall. So 
at least we are driven to conjecture, for the sec 
of Exeter was not constituted for another century, 
nor was he made Bishop of Sherborne till the death 
Q-f Wulfeig in the year 900, though Alfred styles him 
bishop, and his name is attached to charters as bishop 
for many years before that date. We shall have to 
return to the good bishop's reminiscences when we 
treat of the King's private and literary life. 

The other ecclesiastics who worked in that noble 
band of the King's helpers, such as Ethelstan and 
Werewulf of Mercia, are scarcely more than names to 
us, unless we except Joannes Erigena, or Scotus, an 
Irishman by birth, who is said by some to have taken 
refuge with the King. That Alfred when a boy had 
known John at the court of Charles the Bald, where 
he was tutor to Judith and her brothers, we have 
already heard, and may be sure that he would have 
been anxious to obtain the help of so eminent a 
scholar and thinker. Moreover, John the Scot, who 
has been called the father of the Realists, and had 
studied in the East and at Athens, may well have 
needed an asylum at this time. He had written 
works on the Eucharist, and on predestination, which 
had brought him into trouble with the authoritie 
the Church, and had not only refused to disti 
religion from philosophy, on the ground that both 

S.L. VIII. Q 



226 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

had the same end — the search for truth ; but had 
actually maintained that all authority is derived from 
reason, and that authority which is not confirmed by 
reason is of no value. At the same time his famous 
retort to Charles — who had asked him sitting at meat 
what separates a Scot and a sot {quid interest inter 
Seotum et sotum) — " the table only " (mensa tantum), 
may have made the French court an undesirable 
residence. Still, had he come to England, Asser had 
surely specially noticed him amongst Alfred's helpers 
and friends. 

Of laymen a long list might be given, from Ethelred 
of Mercia, to Othere and Wulfstan, his sea captains, the 
account of whose voyages in the North Sea is inter- 
polated by Alfred in his translation of Orosius. But 
beyond their names, and offices in the King's house- 
hold, there is little to tell of them, though enough 
remains to witness to the truth of Asser's eloquent 
statement, that " he would avail himself of every 
opening to procure helpers in his great designs, to aid 
him in his strivings after wisdom ; and like a prudent 
bird, which, rising in early morning from her loved 
nest, steers her swift flight through the uncertain tract 
of air, and descends on the manifold and varied flowers 
of grass, herb, and shrub, trying that which pleases 
most, that she may bear it to her home, so did he 
direct his eyes afar, and seek abroad that which he 
had not at home within his own kingdom." 

At the same time, though he gathered round 
him competent men of all nations and all callings, 
wheiever he could find them, Alfred was singu- 



THE KING'S FRIENDS. 227 

larly independent of them. He had no indispen- 
sable officers. The work which went on so busily 
during those years of peace, and was transforming 
the life of all southern England, was his own work. 
He was not only the inspirer, but in a very real sense 
the doer of it, and there is no name of bishop, soldier, 
or jurist, which can make good a claim to anything 
more than honour reflected from their great King. 
In all history it would be hard to find a more striking 
example of what one man may do for a nation in the 
course of a short lifetime. 



Q 2 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE KING'S NEIGHBOURS. 

" All kings shall fall down before him : all nations shall do him services 
" For he shall deliver the poor when ke crietk ; the needy also,, and hity 
that hath no helper. " 

The temptation to over-govern is apt to beset rulers 
who have the intense love of order, and genius for 
organizing, which distinguished Alfred. It is not easy 
for such men to recognise the worth of national or 
local habits and customs, or to resist the temptation 
of imposing their own laws and methods upon races 
which come under their influence, and Christendom has 
suffered grievously, and is still suffering, from such 
attempts to crush out national life. The surroundings 
of Alfred were precisely those most likely to have 
prompted such a policy. In the years of rest which 
followed the peace of Wedmore the West Saxon 
kingdom increased in wealth and power so rapidly 
as completely to overshadow its weaker neighbours. 
One after another they sought the protection of 
Alfred, and in no case was such protection refused, 
or any attempt made to fasten on them the West 
Saxon code of laws, or to supersede the native 
government. 

The old enemies of the Saxons and Angles, the 



7KB KING'S NEIGHB0U1 



Britons, who had been forced hack into the \\ 
mountains, had maintained their independt 
such kings as Offa and Egbert. There had been 
constant wars on the marshes. Often defeated and 
invaded, the Celtic tribes had always closed up be- 
hind the retreating Saxon armies. They had refused 
all allegiance, and held little peaceable intercourse 
with their stronger neighbours. In the last of the 
Saxon invasions, King Ethelwulf had penetrated to 
tdie Isle of Anglesea, and humbled Rotri Mawr (the 
great Roderick), while Alfred was a child. In 
revenge, the Welsh had sympathised with and 
sisted the Dane, and had seriously added to the 
peril of the great struggle of his manhood. 

Rotri Mawr had left six sons, turbulent men from 
their youth up, of whom the leader, probably the 
eldest, was Anarant, who had become the friend and 
ally of the Northumbrian Danes of Halfdene's army. 
The hand of these brethren was heavy on the other 
Welsh princes in those disturbed years. Hemeid, 
prince of Demetia, the disturber of the prelates and 
monastery of St. David's — to appeal against wh 
frequent plunderings Asser made his pilgrimage from 
that quiet sanctuary in "the extremest western coasts 
of Brittain" — was the first to open negotiations with 
Alfred. He and his people were driven to this appeal 
by the violence of their northern neighbours, the six 
sons of Rotri : so they submitted themselves to the 
dominion of the King, and obtained his protection. 
Then Helioed the son of Tendyr, the king or chief 
of the " Brecheinoc " Welsh, occupying the present 



230 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

county of Brecknock and neighbouring districts of 
Central Wales, came in and made his submission, to 
protect his people from the same turbulent neigh- 
bours. Further south, Howell the son of Rhys, and 
Brochmail and Fernmail, the two sons of Mouric, 
who between them held rule over all the tribes in- 
habiting Morganwy and Gwent by the Severn, and 
whose country marched with that of Ethelred of 
Mercia, appealed from that energetic viceroy to King 
Alfred, and placed themselves under his protection. 
They accused the King's son-in-law of violence and 
tyranny ; and we may readily understand that Ethel- 
red's notions of government were of a kind which 
would be likely to bring about frequent collisions with 
his neighbours on the opposite bank of the Severn. 
All of these " gained the love and guardianship " of 
the great King of the West Saxons, "and defence 
from every quarter, even as the King with his men 
could protect himself." So at last Anarant, the son 
of Rotri, with his five brothers, finding that their 
occupation was gone, and that the shield of the great 
King was cast over all their brother princelings and 
their possessions, " abandoning the friendship of the 
Northumbrians, from which they had received harm 
only, came into King Alfred's presence and eagerly 
sought his friendship." This was at once accorded to 
them also. They were honourably entertained at court, 
and Anarant was " made Alfred's son by confirma- 
tion from the bishop's hands," and left for his own 
country loaded with many gifts. The same terms of 
allegiance were imposed on him as on Ethelred of 



THE KING'S NEIGHBOUK 



Mercia : and so, before the year 884, the whole 
of Wales was brought under Alfred's sway ; the 
intertribal wars and plunderings ceased, and the 
country enjoyed peace, and the princes the friend- 
ship of their great neighbour, and his assistance in 
all ways in the improvement of their own people. 
Thus the old wounds were closed for the time, and 
the two nations settled down in unaccustomed peace, 
Celt and Saxon side by side, after upwards of four 
centuries of fierce and disastrous warfare. The peace 
was of short duration, but it lasted till after Alfred's 
death. 

The near relationship between the people of the 
kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex, and the old rivalry 
between their royal houses, must have made the task 
of establishing satisfactory relations between them, 
now that the supremacy of the latter had been 
thoroughly established, even more difficult than in 
the case of North Wales. The memories of Penda 
and Offa, of many battles won on West Saxon soil — 
even of tribute paid and allegiance owned — must 
still have been fresh in Mercia. But Buhred had 
left no children, and the most powerful of the 
Mercian nobles was devoted to Alfred. This was 
Ethelred, the earl of the Anglian tribe of Hwiccas, 
who were settled in the eastern parts of Worcester- 
shire and Herefordshire, and had been the chief 
bulwark against the Welsh. We do not know any- 
thing of his earlier history, and cannot conjecture 
therefore how so brave and able a man, at the hi 
of a tribe inured to the constant warfare of the 



232 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT, 

marches, made no head against Guthrum and the 
pagan army at the time of the Danish occupation 
of Mercia. At any rate he had not forfeited the 
confidence and goodwill of Alfred, for in the year 880, 
the same in which the Danes finally left their camp 
at Cirencester and retired into East Anglia, Ethelred 
was appointed alderman of Mercia, and acknow- 
ledged allegiance to Alfred. We have a charter of 
that year signed by him in that capacity, to which 
is appended Alfred's signature as his over-lord : " I 
Alfred, King, have consented and subscribed." In 
like manner, in the year 883, a gift of church lands 
by Alderman Ethelred bears the endorsement, " I 
Alfred confirm this gift with the sign of the holy 
cross." 

But there is stronger proof of the esteem in which 
Ethelred was held by his king, in the fact that he 
became the husband of Ethelfleda, Alfred's eldest 
daughter. The date of the marriage cannot be 
ascertained, as no notice of the event occurs in 
the Chronicles. But even in those times, when girls 
were married at far earlier ages than now, it could 
scarcely have happened before 882, for Alfred him- 
self was only married in the autumn of 868. But, 
both before and after his marriage, the same energy 
in his government and loyalty to his king seems 
to have distinguished Ethelred. Mercia had its own 
witan, which was summoned more frequently than 
that of Wessex. It was presided over by Ethelred, 
and settled all questions connected with the internal 
affairs of the kingdom, subject only to Alfred's 



THE KING'S NEIGHBOURS, 



233 



approval. In the report of the session of the witan 
in 896, already given, we find the express state- 
ment that it was summoned "with the knowle 

and approbation of King Alfred ; " but neither then, 
nor in the earlier sessions of 883 and 886, is there 
any trace of his further interference. Mercia was 
left to develop itself in its own way, and under its 
own laws. We have, unfortunately, no copy of the 
code which Alfred caused to be prepared for the 
sister kingdom, but the best Anglo-Saxon scholars 
agree in holding, that the institutes of Offa were: 
embodied in it, as we have seen that u Ina's dooms " 
were incorporated in the West Saxon code. 

The wisdom of this policy may be gathered from 
results. The Saxon and Anglian kingdoms re- 
mained distinct, but closely confederated, and the 
differences of language and custom died out rapidly, 
thus preparing the way for a still closer union. 
During Ethelred's life Mercia was consolidated and 
strengthened ; and the Welsh on the one side, and 
the East Anglians on the other, felt a master's 
hand. On his death, in 910, London and Oxford 
were at once incorporated in the West Saxon king- 
dom, and the remainder of Mercia nine years later, 
on the death of Ethelfleda. 

In like manner Alfred's relations with the new 
and enlarged kingdom of East Anglia are charac- 
terised at once by prudence and good faith. Until 
the outbreak of another w r ar the boundaries of 
Guthorm Athelstan's kingdom, as settled by the first 
short treaty of Wedmore, were scrupulous!}' respected. 



234 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

No attempt was made to recover either Essex on 
the south, or any of that part of Mercia which lay 
to the north and east of Watling Street. The only 
act of sovereignty, on the part of Alfred, was the 
introduction into East, Anglia of a code of laws 
similar in essence to the West Saxon code, but at 
the same time carefully recognising and respecting 
differences springing from custom and race. This 
code, in fact, is the enlarged treaty of Wedmore, to 
which reference has been already made. 

In the form in which it has come down to us it is 
called the treaty of Edward and Guthorm, and may 
possibly have been formally agreed to after Alfred's 
death by Edward his son and Guthorm II., who is 
said to have come to the East Anglian throne in 
905. However this may be, there can be no doubt 
that the substance of the code was in force before 
the death of Guthorm Athelstan in 890, for the pre- 
amble begins : " These are the dooms which King 
Alfred and King Guthorm chose," and declares that 
the same had been repeatedly ratified between the 
Saxons and Danes. The differences between the two 
codes are greater in appearance than reality. Thus 
the code for the Danish kingdom has one doom only 
in substitution for the whole Decalogue, and the 
greater part of the Levitical laws, which are set out 
in the West Saxon code. This sweeping doom 
declares that "the people shall love one God only, 
and zealously renounce every kind of heathendom." 
The remainder of the code is taken up with declara- 
tions of right, and lists of penalties, founded on the 



THE KING'S NEIGHBOURS. 



same principles, and inflicted for the same cla 
offences, as those in Alfred's dooms. The 
liability of every law-breaker to the temporal and 
spiritual power — the necessity for making amend 
the Church, as well as to the Crown and the kin of 
the injured man — is enforced throughout. In the 
same way the rights of the several classes of society 
are valued according to the amount of their property; 
but in each case the division of race is also recognised, 
the Saxon paying "were" and "wite," the Dane 
" lahslit." The only difference of note is, the greater 
amount of protection which the Danish code endea- 
vours to throw over priests and foreigners. Thus 
Article XII. enacts that "if any man wrong an eccle- 
siastic, or foreigner, as to money or life, the king, or 
earl, or bishop shall be to him in place of a kinsman ; 
and let boot be strictly made according as the deed 
may be, to Christ, and to the king ; or let Jiim 
avenge the deed very deeply who is king among 
the people." This distinction may have arisen from 
the necessity of shielding Christian clergy, in those 
parts where the majority of the people were still 
Pagans, who remembered the sack and burning of 
the monasteries ; and from the desire of Alfred to 
encourage intercourse between his own immediate 
subjects and the East Anglians. 

After a few restless years, ending in the out- 
break of 885, when Alfred's fleet crossed from 
Rochester to avenge the breach of peace by the sea- 
faring portion of Guthorm Athelstan's people, that 
prince seems to have kept faith with his over-lord, and 



236 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

to have lived quietly at home. Whether his conver- 
sion was sincere or not we cannot tell ; but certainly, 
under the influence of the treaty-code, and the inter- 
course with the neighbouring kingdoms, and with the 
remnants of the old Anglian stock which remained 
within their borders, the Danes, who dwelt in all the 
central counties bordering on Watling Street, became 
a Christian people. In 890 Guthorm Athelstan died, 
and was buried at Thetford. He was succeeded by 
one Eohric, a Northman, under whom the Danes 
settled on the coasts of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex 
appear to have returned to their old piratical habits, if 
not to heathenism, and to have made common cause 
with Hasting in his great invasion of England. But 
even after the defeat of the last great viking the policy 
of Alfred remained unchanged. With the exception 
of the western portion of Essex, which he incorpo- 
rated in Mercia for the protection of London, the 
boundaries of East Anglia were left as they had been 
settled by the treaty of Wedmore. 

The Northumbrian kingdom can scarcely be 
reckoned amongst the neighbours of Wessex, but 
even there Alfred's influence was acknowledged. 
After the death of Halfdene, Guthrid, said to have 
been a son of Hardicanute, king of Denmark, suc- 
ceeded. He was a Christian, and became the firm 
ally of Alfred, who assisted him in the restoration of 
the Church of Durham, and contributed, out of that 
eighth of his income which was set apart for these 
purposes, to the needs of other churches and servants 
of God dwelling in Northumbria. Unbroken peace 



THE KING'S NEIGHBOURS. 

was maintained between the two kingdoms during all 
Alfred's days. 

Kent and Sussex were mere appanages of Y. 
before Alfred came to the throne, but had not until 
now been thoroughly incorporated. This was now 
done. Instead of a cadet of the royal family of 
Cerdic ruling as king in one or the other of them, as 
Ethelwulf and Athelstan had done, they were now 
placed under Alfred's aldermen, and were subject, no 
doubt, to the same burdens, and entitled to the same 
privileges, as Wiltshire or Berkshire. At the same 
time local traditions and customs were respected, 
such as gavelkind, which remains in Kent to this 
day. 

Thus the King lived, in perfect amity with his neigh- 
bours, and without a thought of abusing his superior 
strength. No soldier of Alfred's ever drew sword 
except in defence of his own home and country. He 
even put a check on his energetic son-in-law Ethclred 
of Mercia, when his hand was beginning to be felt too 
heavily by the people of North Wales. No great 
soldier had evermore plausible pretexts for despoiling 
his neighbours. All his boundaries towards the north 
and east wanted rectifying, and occasions for quarrel 
with the East Anglians, and Welsh, and Northum- 
brians were never far to seek. But in his eyes strength 
and power were simply trusts, to be used by their 
possessors for the benefit of the weak. Tl is his 

reading of the will and meaning of the King who 
commanded him, and he acted on it with a sic 
mind, exercising a forbearance and moderation in his 



238 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

wars, negotiations, and treaties, for which it would be 
hard to find a parallel. 

Indeed, one is at times inclined to be impatient of 
his great patience ; to think that for his people's sake 
his hand should have been heavier upon Guthorm and 
Hasting, when they were in his powef ; to wish that 
he had not left the task of incorporating all England 
in one kingdom to his successors. We are all tempted 
in our secret hearts to believe that the great Italian 
was right in putting mercy, courteousness, truthful- 
ness, in the category of luxuries which princes can 
only afford to use with the most guarded moderation. 

" The present manner of living/' Machiavelli writes 
(cap. xiv.), " is so different from the way that ought to 
be taken, that he who neglects what is done to follow 
what ought to be done, will sooner learn how to ruin 
than how to preserve himself. For a tender man, and 
one that desires to be honest in everything, must needs 
run a great hazard among so many of a contrary 
principle. Wherefore it is necessary for a prince that 
is willing to subsist to harden himself, and learn to be 
good or otherwise according to the exigencies of his 
affairs." And again (cap. xix.), " How honourable it is 
for a prince to keep his word, and act rather with 
integrity than craft, I suppose every one understands. 
Nevertheless experience has shown in our times that 
those princes who have not pinned themselves up to 
that punctuality and preciseness have done great 
things, and by their cunning and subtlety not only 
circumvented and pierced the brains of those with 
whom they had to deal, but have overcome and been 



THE KING'S NEIGHBOURS. 239 

too hard for those who have been so superstitiot 
exact. Nor was there ever any prince that wranl 
lawful pretence to justify his breach of promise. And 
men are so simple in their temper, and so submissive 
to their present necessities, that he that is neat and 
cleanly in his collusions shall never want people to 
practise them upon. A prince, therefore, is not 
obliged to have all the forementioned good qualil 
in reality, but it is necessary to have them in appear- 
ance ; nay, I will be bold to affirm, that having them 
actually, and employing them on all occasions, they 
are extremely prejudicial. Whereas, having them 
only in appearance, they turn to better account. It is 
honourable to seem mild, and merciful, and courteous, 
and religious, and sincere, and indeed to be so, pro- 
vided your mind be so rectified and prepared, that 
you can act quite contrary on occasion." 

But the more attentively we study Alfred's life, the 
more clearly does the practical wisdom of his methods 
of government justify itself by results. Of strong 
princes, with minds " rectified and prepared " on the 
Machiavellian model, the world has had more than 
enough, who have won kingdoms for themselves, and 
used them for themselves, and so left a bitter in- 
heritance to their children and their people. It is 
well that, here and there in history, we can point to 
a king whose reign has proved that the highest 
success in government is not only compatible with, 
but dependent upon, the highest Christian morality. 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE KING'S FOE. 

"Frowardness is in his heart, he deviseth mischief continually ; he sowcth 
discord. 

" Therefore shall his calamity come suddenly; suddenly shall he be broken 
without remedy. " 

In the middle of his great reforms, when all England 
was thrilling with new life, and order and light were 
beginning to penetrate into the most out-of-the-way 
corners of the kingdom, the war-cloud gathered again, 
and Alfred had once more to arm. It was against 
the old enemy, "the army," as the chroniclers style it 
—what was left of it, at least, after three years of 
precarious fighting and plundering in France and 
Flanders, with a huge accession of recruits from 
the wild spirits of all the tribes whose struggles were 
distracting Europe. The anxiety with which the 
English watched their old foes appears from the 
care with which their doings are noted year by year 
in the Saxon Chronicle. Plegmund, or whoever 
was the editor, had clearly an uneasy feeling that 
Alfred and his realm had not seen the last of them. 
So we hear how they went up the Meuse, and plun- 
dered from the Meuse to the Scheldt, and from thence 



THE KING'S FOE. 24I 



crossed to Amiens in 884, the year that Pope Martin 
of blessed memory died. In the next year Charles 
the Bald was killed by a wild boar while hunting, and 
his death was the signal for renewed activity amongst 
the Northmen. Another great fleet and army of Pagans 
now came from Germany into the country of the Old 
Saxons, and were there defeated in two battles. We 
have already seen how a division of "the army" in the 
same year tried their fortune in Kent, and went back 
to the Continent wiser and poorer pirates. 

In 886 "the army/' reunited again, sailed and 
marched up the Seine, and laid siege to Paris, or rather 
to the island on which lay all that was left of the city. 
For a whole year the Northmen lay about Paris, but 
" by the merciful favour of God, and the brave defence 
of the citizens, could never force their way inside the 
walls." Indeed, it would seem that they never wrested 
the bridge from the besieged. At the end of a year 
the siege was abandoned, and "the army," passing 
under the bridge, which they had failed to destroy or 
take, went up the Seine to its junction with the Marne, 
and then up that river as far as Chezy, where they 
formed one of their fortified camps. In the following 
year, on the death of Charles (nephew of Charles the 
Bald), the unhappy kingdom of the Franks was broken 
into five portions, Arnulf his nephew, who had in fact 
usurped the throne in the last few weeks of his uncle's 
life, keeping the Rhine provinces, with the nominal title 
of Emperor. The new kings were soon quarrelling, 
and, as the Saxon Chronicle records, "held their hinds 
in great discord, and fought two general battles, and 

S.L. VIII. R 



242 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

oft and many times laid waste the country, and each 
repeatedly drove out the other." 

Thus the descendants, legitimate and illegitimate, 
of Charlemagne fought over the shreds of his monster 
empire, exhausting its strength in their selfish struggles 
("battles of the kites and crows/' as Milton contemp- 
tuously summed up the history of similar doings on 
the smaller arena of England, amongst the Saxon 
princes in the previous century), while, on every 
frontier, Saracens, Hungarians, and Scandinavians were 
hemming it in, and cutting it short. In the very heart 
of it a host of Northmen were holding the richest 
portions, and carrying rapine and insult to the gates 
of the city where, only fifty years before, the Pa- 
ladins of Charlemagne had been holding their great 
pageants. 

The miseries of the next few years in those fair 
lands are scarcely to be paralleled in modern history. 
In 891, however, Arnulf had established his own 
authority in the Rhine provinces, and was able to 
gather a strong army of Eastern Franks, Saxons, and 
Bavarians, and lead them against the common enemy. 
After some reverses, he surprised the Danes in the 
neighbourhood of Louvaine, and defeated them so 
signally that the Low Countries were cleared of them 
altogether, and suffered no further, except from occa- 
sional flying visits of a few galleys. The remnants of 
the broken bands fled southward, attracted towards 
"the army" of Hasting, who was now holding the 
town of Amiens, and living on the neighbouring dis- 
tricts, having defeated Odo, the king of the Western 



THE KING'S FOE. 243 



Franks, in several attempts to dislodge him. Another 
year of Danish occupation brought a terrible famine 
on the whole country, and effected that in which 
King Odo had failed. Hasting could hold Amiens 
no longer, and moved with " the army " to the coast, 
encamping about Boulogne ; to which place also gravi- 
tated the remains of the host which had escaped from 
Louvaine, and no doubt all the rascaldom of the 
empire. It is probable that Hasting's communica- 
tions with his countrymen on the Norfolk and Suffolk 
coasts had never been interrupted, and that the old 
pirate knew well how rich and prosperous the island 
had become since he had sailed away from Fulham 
some thirteen years before. He knew also something 
of the strength and temper of the King whom he 
would have to meet there, and, had a choice been open 
to him, would doubtless have preferred some other 
venture. But behind him lay a famine-stricken land ; 
round him a larger muster of reckless fighters than 
any he had yet led ; before him, within sight, at 
an easy day's sail, the shores of a land on which no 
hostile foot had been planted for eight long years. 
So there, on the cliffs above Boulogne, Hasting, like 
a leader of the same type in the first years of this 
nineteenth century, planned the invasion of Alfred's 
kingdom, and waited for a favourable autumn wind 
to carry over his fleet. 

Such are, briefly, the details which we gather from 
the chroniclers of the events which preceded, and 
brought about, the third great invasion which Alfred 
had to meet. 

R 2 



244 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

His great antagonist in this last war was already in 
the decline of life, and had grown grey in crime. Of 
all the leaders of the hosts of heathen Northmen, who 
were the scourge of Western Europe in the ninth 
century, he stands out as the most ruthless and false, 
as well as one of the ablest and most successful. 
" The worst man that ever was born, and who has 
done most harm in our age," is the summary of his 
character and career in the old French chronicler— 

" Le plus mal horn qui une nasquist, 
E qui al siecle plus mal fist." 

We know something already of his later life since 
879. The story of his earlier doings owes probably 
much of its romance to the rhyming chroniclers who 
sung of his atrocities, but is clear enough in general 
outline to claim a place in history, and a moment's 
attention from those who would rightly appreciate 
our hero-king. 

The great and indecisive battle of Fontenoy near 
Auxerre, where the grandsons of Charlemagne brought 
their rival claims to the decision of the sword in the 
year 841, exhausted the empire, and left it open to 
the onslaughts of the Northmen, and the freebooters 
of all races who swelled their ranks. Within five 
years of that great slaughter a formidable army of 
these marauders were already in the heart of France, 
and had sacked and burnt the town of Amboise, and 
plundered the district between the Loire and Cher. 
About the year of Alfred's birth they laid siege to 
Tours, from which they were repulsed by the gallantry 
of the citizens, assisted by the miraculous aid of 



THE KING'S FOE. 






Saint Martin. It is at this siege that I last;. 
appears as a leader. 

His birth is uncertain. In some accounts he is said 
to have been the son of a peasant of Troyes, the 
capital of Champagne, and to have forsworn his 
faith, and joined the Danes in his early youth, from an 
inherent lust of battle and plunder. In others h 
called the son of the jarl Atte. But, whatever his 
origin, by the middle of the century he had established 
his title to lead the Northern hordes in those fierce 
forays which helped to shatter the Carlovingian Empire 
to fragments. After the retreat from Tours he and the 
Viking Biorn — surnamed "Cote de Fer" from an iron 
plate which was said to cover the only vulnerable part 
of his body — established themselves in a fortified 
camp on the Seine, and from thence plundered the 
whole of the neighbouring country, until it w r as too ex- 
hausted to maintain them longer. When the banks of 
the Seine were exhausted, the leaders separated, and, 
while Biorn pushed up the river again, Hasting put out 
fo sea, entered the Loire, and established a camp on 
a marshy island not far from its mouth. Here he 
remained for some time, fulfilling his mission while 
anything was left to plunder. When the land was bare, 
leaving the despoiled provinces he again put to 
and, sailing southwards still, pushed up the Tagus and 
Guadalquiver, and ravaged the neighbourhoods of 
Lisbon and Seville. But no settlement in Spain was 
possible at this time. The Peninsula had lately had for 
Caliph Abdalrahman the Second, called El Mo 
" The Victorious," and the vigour of his rule had m 



246 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT, 

the Arabian kingdom in Spain the most efficient 
power for defence in Europe. Hasting soon recoiled 
from the Spanish coasts, and returned to his old 
haunts. 

The leaders of the Danes in England, the Sidrocs 
and Hinguar and Hubba, had, as we have seen, a 
special delight in the destruction of churches and 
monasteries, mingling a fierce religious fanaticism 
with their thirst for battle and plunder. This exceed- 
ing bitterness of the Northmen may be fairly laid in 
great measure to the account of the thirty years of 
proselytising warfare, which Charlemagne had waged 
in Saxony, and along all the northern frontier of his 
empire. The boldest spirits amongst all those German 
tribes, who scorned to turn renegades at the sword's 
point, had drifted away northwards with a tradition of 
deepest hatred to the Cross, and the forms of civilization 
which it carried in its wake. The time for vengeance 
came before one generation had died out, and the 
fairest provinces of the empire were now paying, by 
the burning of churches, the sack of abbeys, the 
destruction of libraries, and the blood of their children, 
for the merciless proselytising of the imperial armies. 
The brood of so-called religious wars have brought 
more ills on the poor old world than all others that 
have ever been hatched on her broad and patient bosom 
— a brood that never misses coming home to roost. 

Hasting seems to have been filled with a double 
portion of this spirit, which he had indulged through- 
out his career in the most inveterate hatred to priests 
and holy places. It was probably this, coupled with 



THE KING'S FOE. 247 



a certain weariness — commonplace murder and sacri- 
lege having grown tame, and lost their charm — which 
incited him to the most daring of all his exploits, a 
direct attack on the head of Christendom, and the 
sacred city. 

Hasting then, about the year 860, planned an attack 
on Rome, and the proposal was well received by his 
followers. Sailing again round Spain, and pillaging 
on their way both on the Spanish and Moorish coasts, 
they entered the Mediterranean, and, steering for 
Italy, landed in the bay of Spezzia, near the town 
of Luna. Luna was the place where the great quarries 
of the Carrara marble had been worked ever since 
the times of the Caesars. The city itself was, it is 
said, in great part built of white marble, and the 
candentia moenia Lttncz deceived Hasting into the 
belief that he was actually before Rome : so he sat 
down before the town which he had failed to surprise. 
The hope of taking it by assault was soon abandoned, 
but Hasting obtained his end by guile. Feigning a 
mortal illness, he sent messages to the citizens offering 
to leave all his accumulated plunder to the Church if 
they would allow his burial in consecrated ground. 
The offer was accepted, and a procession of Northmen, 
bearing and following the bier of Hasting, was admitted 
within the walls. The rites of the Church were duly 
performed, but, at the moment when the body was 
about to be lowered into the grave, Hasting sprang 
from the bier, and, seizing a sw r ord which had 1 
concealed near him, slew the officiating bishop. 1 lis 
followers found their arms at the same moment ; 



248 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

priests were massacred, the gates thrown open, and 
the city taken and spoiled. Luna never recovered its 
old prosperity after the raid of the Northmen, and in 
Dante's time had fallen into utter decay. But Hastings 
career in Italy ended with the sack of Luila ; and, J - 
giving up all hope of attacking Rome, he re-embarked 
with the spoil of the town, the most beautiful of the 
women, and all youths who could be used as soldiers or 
rowers. His fleet was wrecked on the south coasts of 
France on its return westward, and all the spoil lost; 
but the devil had work yet for Hasting and his men, 
who got ashore in sufficient numbers to recompense 
themselves for their losses by the plunder of Provence. 

In these parts he remained until 863. In that year 
he received an embassy from Charles the Bald, headed 
by the Abbot of St. Denis, and agreed to receive 
baptism for a large sum of money, and the cession to 
him in fee of the district of Chartres, which he was to 
hold as the king's vassal. He seems now to have 
lived quietly till the year 876, when he joined the 
army which Charles the Simple was sending against 
Rollo. Hasting undertook a mission to the camp of 
his brother pirate on the banks of the Eure, bearing 
the king's offer of fiefs, and a permanent settlement 
to the Danish leader and his army. His mission 
was unsuccessful, and finding himself suspected of 
foul dealing, and in consequent danger, on his return 
to the French army, he left his adopted home, and 
returned to his old life. How he had spent the 
intervening years we have partly heard already. 

Guthrum, his old companion in arms, died in 890, 



THE KING'S FOE. 249 

and a feeling of restlessness and rebellion against 
the steady, constant pressure of the orderly kingdom 
of their liege lord was creeping through the coasts of 
East Anglia which were most remote from Alfred's 
border. Eohric was either unable, or unwilling, to 
restrain the seafaring portion of his people; and so 
the encouragement was given to Hasting and "the 
army " which brought them eighteen months later to 
the hills above Boulogne, and cost England and 
Alfred three years of war. 



CHAPTER XXI. 



THE THIRD WAVE. 



" Associate yourselves, and ye shall be broken in pieces ; gather yourselves 
together, and- it shall come to nought: for God is with us." 

In the autumn of 893 the great army broke up from 
its Boulogne camp. Hasting had now matured all 
his plans, and collected a fleet large enough to trans- 
port the whole of his troops across the narrow sea. 
The ships, Ethelwerd says, were built at Boulogne ; 
at any rate they were procured by some means in 
such abundance, that when the army embarked, "they 
came over in one passage, horses and all." The 
first detachment, filling 250 ships, were sent on by 
Hasting to seize the nearest point. They steered 
straight across the Channel, and landed without oppo- 
sition at the mouth of the little river Rother, about 
seven miles west of Dungeness. The Chronicles call 
the river Limen (or Lymne) ; but the position of 
Appledore, the undoubted site of the first Danish 
camp of this year, on the banks of the Rother, seems 
to decide the question as to the identity of the 
stream up which "they towed their ships for four 
miles, to the borders of the Andreds Weald." This 
was a forest, 120 miles long, and thirty miles in 



THE THIRD WAVE. 251 

breadth, stretching from Romney Marsh to the easl 
part of Hampshire. Here the Danes stormed a small 
fort garrisoned by a few churlish men, and, without 
encountering further resistance, fixed upon Appledore 
as the site for a permanent camp, which they forth- 
with set to work to establish. 

Hasting himself was not long after them. He 
sailed with his own immediate followers, in eighty 
ships, passed up the Channel, round the North 
Foreland, and into the East Swale, the branch of the 
Medway which separates the Isle of Sheppey from the 
mainland. Some ten miles up the Swale a little creek 
runs south, on which the market-town of Milton, cele- 
brated for its native oysters, now stands. This is, no 
doubt, the Middleton of the Saxon Chronicle, where 
Hasting now "wrought himself a strong fortress." 
Remains of fortifications in the neighbouring marshes 
are still pointed out as the work of the Danes. Between 
the two camps, which would be some twenty-six miles 
apart as the crow flies, lay the Andreds Weald, offer- 
ing immediate shelter in the event of a reverse to 
either wing of the army, and direct communication 
with the camp of their comrades. Through the re- 
cesses of the great wood they could penetrate west- 
ward into the heart of Wessex, and approach within 
a few miles of Winchester or Reading without quitting 
cover. Both camps were established on the banks 
of rivers, navigable to the Danish galleys, so that, it 
the worst came, there were always means of re 
for any who might escape. This position was 
formidable one, and' admirably chosen for the t 



252 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

Hasting had in view. The strength of the camps 
themselves is proved by the fact, that Alfred never 
attempted to storm either of them. 

The King was now in his forty-fifth year, and had 
learnt much in the wars of his youth and early man- 
hood. As we might expect, the tactics and method of 
defence adopted by him in his mature years offer a 
marked contrast to the impetuous gallantry of his 
early campaigns. His first act seems to have been, to 
send his son Edward, with some light troops, to the 
neighbourhood of the two camps, more for the pur- 
pose of watching than fighting ; his next, to strengthen 
the garrisons of his forts. Then, putting himself at 
the head of that portion of his subjects whose turn it 
was for military service, he marched into Kent, and 
took up a strong position, from whence he could best 
watch both the camps. The name of the place where 
Alfred laid out his camp is not given in any chronicler. 
Possibly it was actually in the Andreds Weald, and 
had no name, for it is described (by Florence of 
Worcester) as " a place naturally very strong, because 
it was surrounded on all sides by water, high rocks, 
and overhanging woods.'' And now at once the value 
of the King's army reforms became clear. The Danes 
felt the presence of a foe stronger and better disci- 
plined than themselves, whose vigilance was unceasing. 
The watching army never dwindled, and the invaders 
dared not leave their entrenchments except in small 
bands. These, however, were active and mischievous. 
They stole out for plunder " along the weald in bands 
and troops, by whichever border was for the time with- 



THE THIRD WAVE. 253 



out forces." Then the alarm would be given by the 
Etheling Edward, and the marauders were " sought out 
by bands from the King's army, or from the burghs." 
Thus a desultory warfare continued "almost every 
day, either by day or night/' as the Saxon Chronicle 
describes it, until the theatre of war is suddenly and 
completely changed, and the head-quarters of both 
sides, and the scene of operations, pass over to the 
north of the Thames. 

It was now nearly a year from Hasting's landing, 
and no help had come to him as yet from the Danes 
settled in East Anglia and Northumbria. It is clear 
that he had been intriguing with them, for Alfred had 
had to exact a renewal of their oaths, and even to take 
fresh hostages from the East Angles. Now, as the 
desultory war dragged on, week after week, and month 
after month, the Danes of the northern kingdom got 
more restless and excited, and Hasting, hoping much 
from this rekindling of the old race-hatred, and seeing 
no chance of doing anything more in his present 
position, resolved to abandon his two camps on the 
south of the Thames, and cross into East Anglia. 
He had never ventured yet out of his fortified camps 
in force, but, now that the change of base had been 
determined on, it was worth while playing for a large 
stake. Accordingly, Hasting sent off his ships to a 
rendezvous at Bemfleet, on the Essex coast, and, 
starting with the whole of his land-forces, pushed by 
Alfred's camp, through the forest, and into Hamp- 
shire, where he met one of his marauding part 
laden with spoil. With this booty, and what he could 



254 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

gather himself in his rapid march, he now turned 
northwards, hoping to get to the fords of the Thames 
before Alfred could overtake him. In this he was 
disappointed. The King and the Etheling Edward 
caught the Danish army at Farnham, and forced them 
to fight. In this first general action of the war the 
Saxons were completely victorious. Hasting's army 
lost the whole of their plunder, and the horses they 
had brought with them from France. One of their 
kings (Dr. Pauli suggests Biorn) was desperately 
wounded, and his condition impeded their flight. They 
made good their retreat to the Thames, however ; but, 
either from panic or want of knowledge, struck it at a 
place where there was no ford, and, besides the great 
slaughter at Farnham, numbers of them were lost in 
crossing the river. The first rally they made was in 
an island, at the junction of the Thames and Colne, 
called Thorney Island. Here Hasting halted, and his 
ships probably brought him supplies, and the broken 
bands of his army joined him. But Alfred was on his 
track, and in a short time the island was completely 
invested by Saxon troops. It had thus become only 
a question of days. If the blockade could have been 
maintained, Hasting and the army must have been 
soon at Alfred's mercy. Unhappily the besieged, 
by the aid of their ships, were better supplied than 
the besiegers ; and, moreover, the time of service of 
the army which fought at Farnham had expired, and 
the reliefs had to be brought up at this critical 
moment. Alfred was himself engaged in bringing up 
the relieving force, when news reached him which 



THE THIRD WAVE, 255 



induced him at once to change the whole of his plans, 
and to abandon for the time the hope of crushing his 
foe once for all in Thorney Island. 

Although Hasting had suffered so severely in his 
march and flight, the sagacity which prompted the 
movement was at once justified. Scarcely had the 
beaten army appeared to the north of the Thames 
when the Danes of the east coast, from Essex to 
Northumberland, unable any longer to resist the 
contagion of battle, broke into open hostility, and 
rushed to the aid of their robber brethren. They 
hastily gathered a large fleet, which sailed at once 
for the southern coasts of Wessex, for the purpose of 
creating a diversion, and raising the blockade of 
Hasting at the mouth of the Colne* A hundred of 
these ships pushed up the Exe, while forty more 
made their way round (the Saxon Chronicle says " by 
the north ") into the Bristol Channel. Each fleet carried 
an armed force besides the crews ; and Exeter in the 
south, and some fortress on the north coast of Devon- 
shire, were formally invested. This was the news 
which reached Alfred on his march towards Essex, 
and it had all the effect which Hasting had looked 
for. Alfred at once resolved to march westward 
himself. The Southern Welsh who dwelt in Cornwall 
might follow the example of the East Anglians and 
Northumbrians, and join the invaders, and the whole 
realm be in a blaze again, as it was in 879. In any 
case he could not leave Somerset and Wilts, pro- 
bably the richest and most populous parts of the 
whole of Wessex, and those in which his own 



256 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

property was chiefly situate, open to attack from 
the west. 

The blockade of Thorney Island was therefore 
abandoned at once, and Hasting, with the wrecks of 
the two armies which had garrisoned the camps of 
Appledore and Milton, escaped to Bemfleet Here he 
found his ships lying, and his wife and sons, and the 
heavy baggage of his army, already occupying the 
old fortifications which had been thrown up there by 
some Danish leader, if not by himself, nine years 
before. His ranks were soon recruited, by bands of 
Danes from the outlying parts of the kingdom. He 
lost no time in his trenches, but started at once on 
a plundering expedition into Mercia. 

Before starting by forced marches for the west, 
Alfred had divided his forces, and sent a strong body, 
under the command probably of his son Edward, who 
had greatly distinguished himself in Farnham fight, 
to reinforce Ethelred, who was holding London with 
the Mercian troops. That able and energetic leader 
immediately planned an attack on the camp at 
Bemfleet, in accordance with the wishes of the 
citizens of London, who could not brook the constant 
menace of such a hornets' nest in their immediate 
neighbourhood. So Ethelred marched suddenly upon 
Bemfleet camp, and, for the first time in these wars, 
the Danes were thoroughly beaten behind their own 
fortifications, and in a position of their own choosing. 
The camp was stormed, and all the booty found there 
taken, and amongst the prisoners were the wife and 
two sons of Hasting. There is a passage in the 



THE THIRD WAVE. 257 



S^xon Chronicle, and in Florence of Worcester, to the 
effect that these boys had shortly before been sent 
as hostages to Alfred, who had caused them to be 
baptized, he and Ethelred acting as their sponsors, 
after which they had been sent back to their father. 
And now again Alfred restored them and their mother 
to his faithless enemy, but the spoil was shared 
amongst the citizens of London and Ethelred's 
garrison. The Danish fleet was also captured at 
Bemfleet, and all the serviceable vessels were taken 
to London or Rochester, while the remnant were 
broken up or burnt. Hasting's means of retreat were 
thus destroyed, but the disaster only seems to have 
braced the nerves of the old pirate for greater efforts. 
He returned to the neighbourhood of Bemfleet, col- 
lected the remnants of the army, received large re- 
inforcements again from East Anglia, and entrenched 
another camp at Shobury, some ten miles east of his 
former position. From thence he marched out at the 
head of another strong force, along the northern 
bank of the Thames, and then up the Severn valley, 
thus carrying fire and sword into the heart of 
Ethelred's own country. His intention may have been 
to relieve the Danish forces in Devonshire, and to cut 
Alfred off from his supplies and base. If so, he was 
quickly and completely foiled. Ethelred hastened 
down to the threatened district, and sent summonses 
to all the neighbouring king's aldermen and thanes. 
The vigour and alacrity of the response are very 
marked. " Then Ethelred," the Saxon Chronicle says, 
"and Ethelhelm the alderman (of Wilts), and Ethel- 

S.L. VITL Q 



258 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

noth the alderman (of Somerset), and the king's 
thanes who were then at home in the fortified places, 
gathered forces from every town east of the Parret, 
and as well west as east of Selwood, and also north of 
the Thames, and west of the Severn, and also some 
part of the North Welsh people." Hasting was now 
in the district where Guthrum had attempted a settle- 
ment, and which had been the scene of the campaign 
of Ethandune. The country knew well w T hat to ex- 
pect from the tender mercies of the Dane, and rose as 
one man, without a thought of the established courses, 
or whose turn it might be for the regular three months' 
service. Hasting met the rising by turning north- 
wards, abandoning all hope of penetrating Wessex. 
He might look for more encouragement, at least for 
less enthusiasm of resistance, on the North Welsh 
border : so he made no halt till he reached Buttington 
in Montgomeryshire, on the banks of the Severn, 
where he entrenched himself and waited for Ethelred. 
Buttington is a border parish ; Offa's dyke, which runs 
through it, is still the boundary between Shropshire 
and Montgomeryshire. There are several earthworks 
still to be seen in the neighbourhood, and some thirty 
years ago a vast deposit of human bones was disco 
vered in digging the foundations of the schools there, - 
near the parish church. 

Ethelred on his arrival divided his forces, so that he 
might watch both banks of the Severn, and beset 
Hasting's camp very straitly, so that no succours or 
supplies could reach the besieged. " When they 
had now sat there many weeks on both sides the 



THE THIRD WAVE, 259 

river," the Chronicle tells us, "then were the enemy dis- 
tressed for want of food, and having eaten a great part 
of their horses, being then starved with hunger, they 
went out against the men who were encamped on the 
east bank of the river, and fought against them. And 
the Christians had the victory. And Ordeh, a king's 
thane, and many other king s thanes were slain, and of 
the Danish men there was very great slaughter made. 
And that part which got away thence was saved by 
flight." 

Hasting saved himself by crossing the Mercian 
border over Watling Street, falling back on a part of 
East Anglia far removed from Alfred's influence, and 
which had stubbornly resisted all but the semblance 
of Christianity. Either the encouragement which he 
found here, in the shape of recruits and sympathy, 
tempted him to renew the struggle in the north of 
Mercia, or he may have thought that his best chance 
of succouring his allies in Devonshire lay in piercing 
to the west coast at some point where his great fleet, 
already in those seas, could fetch him off, and land 
him on the shores of the Bristol Channel. At any 
rate, after removing the Danish women and children, 
and all their possessions, and such ships as were left 
them, from Shobury to the island of Mersea — at the 
mouth of the Blackwater, a few miles south of Col- 
chester, a safer spot, and twenty miles further from 
London — and committing the protection of the settle- 
ment to the East Anglians of those parts, now his 
open allies, Hasting went back again with a fresh 
army, " at one stretch, day and night " says the Saxon 

S 2 



260 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

Chronicle, and appeared suddenly before Chester. 
The royal town was not surprised, and was held by 
a strong garrison ; so Hasting swept the country of 
cattle, killed the few people he found outside the walls, 
eat up or destroyed all the crops, which were still 
standing in the late autumn, and then, after two days, 
retired into the peninsula of Wirral, and there went 
into winter quarters. Alfred meanwhile had compelled 
the Danes to raise the sieges of Exeter and the 
fortress in North Devon, and had driven them to 
their ships ; but as the fleet still hung about the coasts 
of Devonshire and South Wales (Cornwall), he did 
not think it safe to leave the far west for the present, 
being no doubt well satisfied with the reports which 
reached him of the vig rous way in which Hasting had 
been met when he th ^atened Central Wessex. So 
the King wintered in I evonshire. 

The first eventful year of the war was now ended, 
and on every side the enormous increase of power in 
the nation consequent on Alfred's rule had proved 
itself. The pagan army had not only been outfought, 
as in past years at Ashdown and Ethandune, but out- 
marched and outmanoeuvred by Alfred and Ethelred, 
and the Saxon and Mercian levies. They had not taken 
a single place of any importance, while one of their 
entrenched camps had been stormed, and four others 
abandoned. The issue could not be doubtful, unless 
some great reinforcements came to Hasting from 
over the sea ; but t a old pirate was still at the head 
of a formidable a ry, and had opened up a good 
recruiting ground . the east coasts. There was no 



THE THIRD WAVE. 261 



room for carelessness or foolhardiness in the coming 
spring. 

The campaign of 895 was probably opened by 
Ethelred, or some Mercian earl, who made a success- 
ful dash at Hasting in the Wirral peninsula, and 
carried off all the store of cattle and provision which 
he had accumulated, for the Saxon Chronicle notices 
this loss as the reason why he broke up his camp 
there. So the Danes took the field, and, avoiding 
Chester and Mercia for the time, marched into North 
Wales. Here, before Ethelred could come at them, 
they collected a large booty in the valleys, and then 
retreated into Northumbria, " fearing," says Florence, 
" to return through Mercia." D^. Pauli gathers, from 
an obscure passage in Ethelwar* ; 's Chronicle, that on 
his march southwards Hasting was intercepted by 
Ethelnoth at Stamford, and tha \ a battle was fought 
there. In any case, in the couise of the summer or 
autumn, the main body of the Danes arrived safely 
in the isle of Mersea, and received their women and 
children from the safe-keeping of their East Anglian 
allies. ; 

Here they were joined in the autumn by the fleet 
and the remains of the army which had been in 
Devonshire. Foiled at all points by Alfred himself, 
and driven to their ships, they had sailed out of the 
Exe, and on their voyage eastward had made a sudden 
descent on the Sussex coast near Chichester. But the 
garrison and citizens turned out and 'ought them, "slay- 
ing many hundreds, and taking so? g of their ships." 
But Hasting was not yet beaten, , id, before Alfred 



262 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

had time to organize an attack on Mersea, put all on 
board his fleet and sailed boldly up the Thames and 
the Lea, and once more fortified himself in a strong 
camp on the latter river, only twenty miles from 
London. And so the second year of the war ended. 

896 opened with a reverse to the Saxon arms. 
Encouraged by the success of the attack on the 
Bemfleet camp two years before, and perhaps by the 
exploit of the citizens of Chichester in the last 
autumn, the men of London and their garrison 
marched out to attack Hasting in his camp on the 
Lea, without waiting the arrival of Alfred or Ethelred. 
They were beaten by the Danes, and retreated on 
London, with the loss of four king's thanes. The 
King now came up, and established himself between 
Hasting's camp and the city, to protect the people 
while they reaped their crops. While encamped for 
this purpose, Alfred, riding one day along the river, 
discovered a place where the stream might be easily 
diverted or obstructed, so that it would be impossible 
for the Danes to pass down it with their fleet. He 
set to the work at once, and at the same time began 
to build two forts, one on each side of the Lea, at 
the point he had selected for diverting the stream. 
Hasting did not wait for the catastrophe. Confiding 
the women and children again to the care of the East 
Anglians, and abandoning his camp and fleet, he 
marched away again north-west, and established him- 
self for the winter near Bridgnorth (Cwatbridge) in 
Shropshire, distancing the force which Alfred sent in 
pursuit. The Londoners took possession of the camp 



THE THIRD WAVE. 263 

and fleet in great triumph. Those ships which they 
could not bring away were burnt, and all which were 
" stalworth " they brought down to London. And so 
ended the third and last year of Alfred's last war. 

In the spring of 897 Hasting broke up his last 
camp on English soil. His army was now composed 
of Northumbrian and East Anglian Danes, as well as 
of his followers who had embarked from Boulogne 
three years before. The former marched back to 
their own homes, while Hasting, with the remains of 
his own followers, felt his way back to some place on 
the east coast. Here the women and children re- 
joined them, and the baffled pirate leader, getting 
together ships enough to carry him and his fortunes, 
" went southward over sea to the Seine." 

" Thanks be to God ! " the Chronicle sums up, " the 
army had not utterly broken down the English nation : 
but during those three years it was much more broken 
down by the mortality which raged amongst cattle 
and amongst men ; and most of all by this, that many 
of the most eminent of the King's servants in the land 
died during the three years, some of whom were — 
Swithulf, bishop of Rochester, and Ceolmund, alder- 
man of Kent, and Beorthulf, alderman of Hants, and 
Ealherd, bishop of Dorchester, and Eadulf the king's 
thane in Sussex, and Beornwulf the wicreeve of 
Winchester, and Ecgulf the king's horse-thane, and 
many also besides these, though I have named the 
most famous." A goodly list of men who could ill be 
spared ; most of them, too, we may note, officers in the 
districts which had borne the brunt of the invasion. 



264 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

The embers of the fire which Hasting had kindled 
continued to smoulder after he had left the island. 
His Northumbrian and East Anglian allies could not 
at once give up the excitement of the rover's life, 
which was bred in their blood, and of which they had 
now again tasted after so many years of abstinence. 
They were chiefly dwellers by the sea, and now, aban- 
doning all attempts at inland warfare, fitted out small 
squadrons of their swift vessels, called " oescs," and in 
these cruised off the southern coasts of Wessex, in- 
flicting much local damage, and greatly exasperating 
Alfred and his people. In the course of the autumn 
Alfred's, new galleys swept the whole of these ma- 
rauders off the sea, capturing twenty of their " oescs " 
at one time or another. But the only detailed account 
we have of an action between the King's ships and the 
pirates suggests rather that the Danes still retained 
their mastery as sailors, and that Alfred and his new 
ships, with their motley crews, only prevailed against 
them by sheer weight and superior numbers. 

The story is in the Saxon Chronicle as follows : — 
" Some time in the same year there came six ships to 
Wight, and there did much harm, as well as in Devon 
and elsewhere along the sea-coast. Then the King com- 
manded nine of his new ships to go thither, and they 
blockaded the passage from the port to the outer sea. 
Then went the pirates with three of their ships out 
against them ; and three lay in the upper part of the 
port dry, and the crews were gone out of them on 
shore. Then the King's ships took two of the three 
ships at the outer port, and killed the crews, and the 



THE THIRD WAVE. 265 

other ship escaped. In that also all the men were 
killed except five, and it escaped because the Kings 
ships got aground. They indeed were aground very 
disadvantageously, for three lay on that side where 
the Danish ships were aground, and all the rest upon 
the other side, so that no one of them could get to 
the others. But when the water had ebbed many 
furlongs from the ships, then the Danish men went 
from their three ships to the other three which were 
left by the tide on their side, and fought against them 
there." "Then might you have seen," says the 
Chronicle of Huntingdon, "the English people of 
the six ships looking at the battle, and unable to 
bear them help, beating their breasts with their hands, 
and tearing their hair with their nails" — a grim 
little picture of the doings of the ancestors of the 
Blakes and Nelsons. " There were slain Lucumon, 
the kings reeve, and Wulfheard the Frisian, and 
Abbse the Frisian, and Ethelhere the Frisian, and 
Ethelferth *the king's neatherd ; and of all the 
men, Frisians and English, 72, and of the Danish 
men, 120. Then, however, the flood-tide came to 
the Danish ships before the English could get theirs 
off: they therefore rowed away. Nevertheless, they 
were so damaged that they could not row round 
Sussex ; and there the sea cast two of them on shore, 
and the crews were led to the King at Winchester ; 
and he commanded them to be there hanged. And 
the men who were in the single ship came to East 
Anglia sorely wounded." 

It appears that Alfred also hanged all that fell into 



266 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

his hands of the crews of the remainder of the twenty- 
pirate vessels. Some of his biographers are inclined 
to gloss, or extenuate, the King's severity in these last 
dealings with the pirates. It seems to me the most 
wise and merciful course he could have taken. The 
war was now virtually at an end, and it was necessary 
to impress upon the loose seafaring population of 
Northumbria and JEast Anglia that they could only 
continue it in small marauding excursions on their 
own account at the peril of their necks. That the 
King, at this triumphant crisis of his life, as well as 
on every other occasion, was lenient to his foes, and 
scrupulously careful to act up to the high standard he 
had set himself, is abundantly clear by the fact that 
he exacted no penalty whatever from Northumbria, 
and from East Anglia only annexed a corner of Essex. 
It would have been easy for him and Ethelred to have 
marched from Watling Street to the Forth, and the 
Danish under-kings were practically at his mercy. 
But they, and the bulk of their people, had taken no 
active part with Hasting, and the King would not 
punish them for want of power to control the most 
turbulent of their people, in such times, and under 
such temptations. So there was no reckoning for the 
past; only, as they could not hinder their nominal 
subjects from turning pirates, the King must read a 
lesson to such persons. That of Winchester was 
enough. There is no hint of any further piracy during 
Alfred's reign. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

THE KING'S HOME. 

" Blessed is the man that doth meditate good things in wisdom. 

" He shall pitch his tent nigh unto her, and shall lodge in a lodging where 

good things are. 
" He shall get his children under her shelter, and shall lodge wider her 

branches. " 

We may now take leave of the King's public life. 
All that can be told — at least all that the present 
writer has to tell of it — lies behind us. How unsatis- 
factory the picture is at the best ; how indistinctly 
most of the persons stand out from behind the mists 
of a thousand years ; how necessary it has been at 
every step to hesitate as to the course and meaning 
of events ; how many questions of grave importance 
remain scarcely stated, and altogether unsolved, no 
one can feel more strongly than he does. At the 
same time, unless the attempt has wholly failed, he 
must have in some sort made clear for his readers the 
figure of a king who, having by his own energy, and 
by his personal character and genius, won for himself 
a position such as no man of the English race ever 
had before, or has ever had since, never used, or thought 
of using, his strength and wisdom on his own behalf, 
or for his own selfish purposes — a king, in short, 



268 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

who yielded himself to do the work to which God 
had called him, simply and thoroughly, never losing 
the» consciousness that he was himself under command. 

We have still, however, to gather up such fragments 
as are left of the home-life of Alfred, and to glance 
at the work in which, after all, he probably most 
delighted — his writings and translations. 

Alfred, as we know, had no settled home. We find 
him now in one county, now in another, at one of the 
royal residences, which were indeed so numerous that 
we can only suppose the accommodation at many of 
them to have been of the roughest and simplest de- 
scription. The ordinary houses of the Saxon nobles 
consisted of a large central hall, with chapel and 
rooms for the family attached, and outhouses for the 
servants and followers grouped round them. The 
whole of these buildings were of wood up to Alfred's 
time, and there were no deep moats or military 
defences of any kind. The king's residences differed 
only in size from those of the nobility ; but Alfred 
must have needed much more room than any of 
his predecessors, as his court became very large. 
Foreigners of all nations flocked to it, for whom 
special and liberal provision was made in the distri- 
bution of his income ; and, besides his officers of state, 
he had always in attendance a strong body of troops, 
and a number of skilled artisans and mechanics. 

The importance which he attached to the improve- 
ment of his own residences, and of the architecture of 
his churches and other public buildings, is shown by 
the large proportion of his income which, as we have 



THE KING'S HOME. 269 

seen, was devoted to building purposes. But notwith- 
standing all his efforts, and the magnificence of many 
of his new buildings, compared with any then known 
in England, the quarters in which the royal house- 
hold lived were often rough places enough, as we 
know incidentally from the history of his most cele- 
brated invention — the horn-lantern. At the time that 
he made the division of his yearly income in the 
manner we have heard, Alfred also resolved to offer 
to God no less of the service of his mind and body 
than of his worldly wealth. " He accordingly made a 
vow to consecrate half of his time to God's service ; 
and this vow, so far as his infirmity would allow, he 
performed with all his might, by night and day. 
But inasmuch as he could not equally distinguish the 
length of the hours by night, on account of the darkness, 
and also oftentimes of the day on account of the storms 
and clouds, he began to consider by what means, 
without any uncertainty, relying on the mercy of God, 
he might discharge the tenor of his vow till his death. 
After much thought on these things, he at length hit 
on a shrewd invention. He commanded his chaplains 
to supply wax of sufficient quantity and quality, and 
had it weighed in such a manner that when there was 
so much of it in the scales as would equal the weight of 
seventy-two pence, he caused the chaplains to make 
six candles thereof, of equal length ; so that eacli 
candle might have twelve divisions marked across it, 
By this plan, therefore, those six candles burned for 
twenty-four hours — a night and day — without fail, 
before the sacred relics of many of God's elect, which 



270 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

always accompanied him wherever he went. But 
sometimes they would not continue burning a whole 
day and night, till the same hour that they were 
lighted on the previous evening, from the violence of 
the wind, which blew without intermission through the 
doors and windows of the churches, the fissures at the 
divisions in the plankings of the walls, or the thin 
canvas of the tents. When, therefore, the candles 
burned out and finished their course before the proper 
time, the King considered by what means he could 
shut out the wind ; and so, by a useful and cunning 
invention, he had a lantern beautifully constructed in 
wood and white ox-horn, which, when skilfully planed 
till it is thin, is no less transparent than a vessel of 
glass. This lantern, therefore, was wonderfully made 
of wood and horn, as we before said ; and by night a 
candle was put into it, which shone as brightly without 
as within, and was not extinguished by the wind ; for 
the opening of the lantern was also closed up, accord- 
ing to the King's command, by a door of horn. By this 
contrivance these six candles, lighted in succession, 
lasted twenty-four hours — neither more nor less ; and 
when these were extinguished, others were lighted?" 

His taste and genius for science, and for mechanics, 
are mentioned in several chroniclers, but there is no 
description left of any other invention of his. Asser, 
in a passage which sums up his everyday mode of 
life, says : " During the frequent wars and other 
trammels of this present life, the invasions of the 
Pagans, and his own daily infirmities of body, he 
continued to carry on the government, and to exercise 



THE KING >S HOME. 271 



hunting in all its branches ; to teach his workers in 
gold and artificers of all kinds, his falconers, hawkers, 
and dog-keepers ; to build houses majestic and good 
beyond all the precedents of his ancestors, by his 
new mechanical inventions ; to recite the Saxon 
books, and especially to learn by heart the Saxon 
poems, and to make others learn them ; and he alone 
never desisted from studying to the best of his ability. 
He attended the mass, and other daily services of 
religion ; he was frequent in psalm-singing and prayer 
at the hours both of day and night. He also went to 
the churches in the night-time to pray secretly, and 
unknown to his courtiers ; he bestowed alms and 
largesses on natives and foreigners of all countries ; 
he was affable and pleasant to all, and curiously eager 
to investigate things unknown." 

That part of the above statement which speaks of 
the Kings teaching his workers in gold has received 
curious illustration from the famous jewel found at 
Newton Park, near Athelney, in 1693, and which is 
now in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. The jewel 
consists of a figure holding a flower in each hand, 
and composed of blue, green, red, and white enamel, 
let into golden cells. The settings and back of the 
jewel are of pure gold, the latter being chased in a 
graceful pattern. It is about half an inch thick, and 
round the outside runs the scroll, "Alfred had me 
worked " — " Alfred mec heht gewyrcan " — stamped 
on the gold edge. 

The above description, from the pen of the in- 
timate friend who was at his side during all. the 



272 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

later years of peace, helps us to picture to our- 
selves the life which the King lived in his great 
court— half camp, half city — which moved about all 
the southern counties, stimulating industry, and over- 
awing outlaws and lawless men on the one hand, and 
exercising on the other a close and severe control 
over the acts of aldermen and sheriffs, and the 
decisions of judges. * In the midst of this home of 
work, and with the example of the chief, and most 
diligent, worker always before their eyes, his family 
grew up round him. 

In his private life the King seems to have been as 
happy as he deserved to be. Of Queen Ethelswitha 
we know nothing, except that she was the faithful 
consort of her husband, and bore him many children. 
The early training of these must have been her chief 
work, and how admirably it was performed may be 
inferred from the results. Every child of Alfred 
turned out well. The girls of the royal family were 
trained in all kinds of womanly work ; the four 
daughters of Edward the Elder, who must have been 
brought up in Ethelswitha's household, having been 
specially distinguished for their great assiduity and 
skill in spinning, weaving, and needlework. And the 
processes used in these arts were by no means simple. 
Bishop Adhelm speaks, even in his time, of webs 
formed " with threads of purple and various other 
colours woven in with the shuttle, thrown from one 
side to the other, thereby forming a variety of 
different colours and figures, each in its own proper 
compartment knit together with exquisite art/' 



THE KING'S HOME. 273 



The higher education, of girls as well as boys, went 
on in the schools attached to the court under Alfred's 
own eye. Probably his own daughters were at least 
as well taught as Queen Edgitha in the next century, 
who was often seen by Ingulphus in his boyhood, 
when his father was in the palace, as he came from 
school. " When I have met her she would examine 
me in my learning, and from grammar would proceed 
to logic, which she also understood, concluding with 
me in most subtle argument ; then causing one of her 
attendant maids to present me with a piece of money, 
I was dismissed to the larder, where I was sure to get 
something to eat." Ethelswitha survived her husband, 
and died at the court of her son in 905. 

The eldest child, Ethelfleda, born in the first year 
of her father's reign, when the Danes were in Reading 
camp, was married very early to the gallant Ethelred, 
the Alderman of Mercia, Alfred's " princeps militiae," 
as he is sometimes called. She shared the government 
with her husband, as Lady of Mercia, and after his 
death ruled gallantly in the centre of England, con- 
solidating and strengthening the Mercian frontiers, 
against the Welsh on one side, and the East Anglians 
on the other. 

Their second daughter was Ethelgeda, who became 
abbess of the great monastery at Shaftesbury, which 
the King built soon after the peace of Wedmore. 
Her residence there may probably account for the 
special attachment which Alfred showed to the town, 
which he rebuilt as early as A.D. 880, if we may 
accept the evidence of William of Malmesbury. He 

S.L. VIII. X 



274 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

mentions in his chronicle that he had seen a stone 
which was dug out of the old walls in his time, and 
which bore the inscription, "A.D. 880, Alfredus Rex 
fecit hanc Urbem, regni sui 8°." 

The third daughter, Elfrida, or Elfrith, became the 
wife of Baldwin of Flanders, the eldest son of Judith, 
Alfred's old playfellow, who had scandalized Christian 
England in the time of his boyhood by her successive 
marriages with his father and brother. How or when 
the reconciliation between them took place we do not 
know. 

The boys were Edward, afterwards King Edward 
the- Elder, and Ethelward. Ethelward, the younger 
son, showed a turn for study, and, " by the divine 
counsels and prudence of the King, was consigned to 
the schools of learning, where, with the children of 
almost all the nobility of the country, and many also 
who were not noble, he prospered under the diligent 
care of his teachers/' While Ethelward then was 
sent to Oxford (or whatever was the leading school 
of England), Edward seems never to have got beyond 
the school which was attached to his father's court. 
Asser states that he and Elfrith were bred up in the 
King's court, " and continue there to this day " (pro- 
bably about A.D. 887), adding in words which clearly 
apply to both the boys, though Ethelward's name is 
not mentioned. He continues: "They had the love of 
all about them, and showed affability and gentleness 
to all, both natives and foreigners, and were in com- 
plete subjection to their father. Nor amongst their 
other studies which pertain to this life, and are fit for 



THE KING'S HOME. 275 

noble youths, are they suffered to pass their time idly 
and unprofitably without learning the liberal arts ; for 
they have carefully learned the Psalms and Saxon 
books, especially the Saxon poems, and are con- 
tinually in the habit of making use of books." 

But Edward inherited all his father's vigour and 
courage, as well as his kindly courtesy, and was ad- 
dicted to, and no doubt encouraged by Alfred in, the 
practice of martial sports, and hunting. There is a 
romantic story which connects his first marriage with 
a hunting expedition. Turning aside from his sport 
to visit an old woman who had been his nurse, he 
found living with her a girl of great beauty, named 
Edgina. She was the daughter of a shepherd, ac- 
cording to William of Malmesbury and Brompton, 
but at any rate was of lowly birth, and had dreamt 
that the moon shone out of her body so brightly 
that it illuminated all England. She had told the 
dream to the old nurse, who had adopted her, and 
now the Etheling came to make the dream true. 
There has been much discussion whether they were 
married, but the better opinion seems to be that 
they were. In any case, their son Athelstan was 
recognised by Alfred as his grandson when quite a 
child, and entrusted to Ethelred and Ethelfleda to 
bring up. When old enough to be brought to court, 
his guardians presented him to Alfred, who was so 
pleased with the boy's look and manner, that he 
"blessed him for king after his son Edward," and 
gave him a purple robe, a belt set with jewels, and a 
Saxon sword in a golden sheath. 

T 2 



276 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREA T. 

Edgina died early, and Edward had a large family 
by two other wives, of whom three daughters married 
the most powerful continental princes : Edgitha, the 
Emperor Otho I. ; Edgiva, Charles the Simple ; and 
Ethilda, Hugo the Great, Duke of Burgundy and 
Neustria, the rival of the Carlovingian line of 
Frankish kings. 

Readers must fill up for themselves the picture of 
the English life round the great King ; and a cheerful 
and healthy life it must have been, with its regular 
work interspersed with the well-kept Saints' days 
and Sundays, on which no bondman could be made 
to work without thereby gaining a right to his 
freedom. The discomfort of their houses was little 
felt by a hardy race, and, while their useful carpentry 
was of the rudest kind, their ornamental furniture 
comprised articles inlaid with the precious metals, 
and candlesticks and goblets and mirrors of wrought 
silver, and hangings of all bright colours. The 
descriptions which have reached us of the dresses 
and ways of the people go far to prove that England 
was merry England a thousand years ago. Men and 
women alike delighted in bright colours. The men, 
in peace time, wore a tunic of wool or linen, with 
sleeves to the wrists, and girded round the waist, and 
those who could afford them, bracelets and rings. 
The women wore dresses of linen or wool, often 
ornamented with embroidery ; and silk hoods with 
long pendants, mantles, girdles, cuffs, and ribands, 
were also not unknown to them. Their ornaments 
were head-bands, necklaces, bracelets, and rings, many 



THE KING'S HOME. 277 



of which were of fine workmanship, and enamelled 
with gems. Their hair was dressed with curling irons, 
and with great care; long curls being the mark of 
a free woman. Even the clergy were addicted to 
coloured garments and ornaments, which drew down 
on them, and on the people, the severe censures of 
stern ecclesiastics such as St. Boniface, who declared 
that the vain showiness in the dress of his people 
announced the coming of Antichrist. 

Gleemen, posture masters, and jugglers were 
always at hand to sing and tumble for the amuse- 
ment of rich and poor during meals and in the 
evenings ; and hunting, and hawking, and sword and 
buckler play, and horse-racing, filled up the intervals 
of more serious business. In short, in the immediate 
neighbourhood of the Court, the life of all but the 
King, and his bishops, and immediate attendants, 
must have passed in a round of strenuous work 
and rough and healthy sport, well calculated to 
develop the powers of his vigorous, if somewhat 
indolent people. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE KING AS AUTHOR. 

" The lips of the righteous feed many : but fools die for want 
of wisdom." 

It is impossible to accept as literally true Asser's 
statement, that it was not until the year 887 that 
Alfred began, on the same day, to read and interpret. 
That he could write as well as read when a boy, 
charters bearing his signature as early as 862, in the 
form, " I, Alfred, brother to the King, have consented 
and subscribed," clearly prove. It was probably, 
however, in the month of November 887 that he 
began that series of books for his people which form, 
after all, his most enduring monument. But for 
Alfred's works the Anglo-Saxon spoken in the ninth 
century might never have reached us at all. When 
he was a boy the literature of his mother-tongue 
consisted of a few poems, such as those of Csedmon 
and Adhelm, sung by the people, and handed 
down from father to son, for even Bede had written 
his great work in Latin. When Alfred died he left 
all those of his people who could read versions of 
the best historical, philosophical, and religious works 
which the times afforded in their own mother-tongue. 



THE KING AS A UTHOR. 



279 



Notwithstanding the evidence from the several pre- 
faces to the works themselves, and from the pas- 
sages interpolated in the text, which contain direct 
references to himself, and could scarcely have been 
written by any other person, it is almost beyond 
belief that he could have translated, paraphrased, and 
adapted all the books which are generally attributed 
to him. The pressure of public business of all kinds 
in the last fifteen years of his life, and the interrup- 
tion of the invasion of Hasting, which must have put 
a stop to his literary w r ork altogether for three years, 
make it almost a physical impossibility ; and we are 
driven to the conclusion that Plegmund, Asser, and 
his chaplains must have done great part of the work 
under his immediate direction and supervision. The 
wisdom and breadth of his views will be seen best 
by a short notice of the most celebrated of the 
works which he left to his people. But the most 
fitting introduction to these will be the account 
given by Asser of the interview which at last turned 
the King to literary work. 

" On a certain day," the Bishop writes, " we were 
both sitting in the King's chamber, talking on all 
kinds of subjects as usual, and it happened that I read 
to him a quotation out of a certain book. He heard 
it attentively with both his ears, and addressed me 
with a thoughtful mind, showing me at the same 
moment a book which he carried in his bosom, wherein 
the daily courses, and psalms, and prayers which he 
had read in his youth were written, and he com- 
manded me to write the same quotation in that book. 



28o LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

Hearing this, and perceiving his ingenuous benevo- 
lence, and devout desire of studying the words of 
divine wisdom, I gave, though in secret, boundless 
thanks to Almighty God, who had implanted such 
a love of wisdom in the King's heart. But I could 
not find any empty space in that book wherein to 
write the quotation, for it was already full of various 
matters ; wherefore I made a little delay, principally 
that I might stir up the bright intellect of the King 
to a higher acquaintance with the divine testimonies. 
Upon his urging me to make haste and write it 
quickly, I said to him, ' Are you willing that I should 
write that quotation on some leaf apart ? For it is 
not certain whether we shall not find one or more 
other such extracts which will please you ; and if that 
should so happen, we shall be glad that we have kept 
them apart' 'Your plan is good,' said he; and I 
gladly made haste to get ready a sheet, in the begin- 
ning of which I wrote what he bade me ; and on that 
same day I wrote therein, as I had anticipated, no 
less than three other quotations which pleased, him ; 
and from that time we daily talked together, and 
found out other quotations which pleased him, so that 
the sheet became full, and deservedly so ; according 
as it is written, i The just man builds upon a mode- 
rate foundation, and by degrees passes to greater 
things.' Thus, like a most productive bee, he flew 
here and there, asking questions as he went, until he 
had eagerly and unceasingly collected many various 
flowers of divine Scripture with which he thickly 
stored the cells of his mind. 



THE KING AS AUTHOR. 281 

" Now when that first quotation was copied, he was 
eager at once to read, and to interpret in Saxon, and 
then to teach others. The King, inspired by God, 
began to study the rudiments of divine Scripture on 
the sacred solemnity of St. Martin [Nov. 11], and 
he continued to learn the flowers collected by certain 
masters, and to reduce them into the form of one 
book, as he was then able, although mixed one with 
another, until it became almost as large as a psalter. 
This book he called his ENCHIRIDION or MANUAL 
[HANDBOOK], because he carefully kept it at hand 
day and night, and found, as he told me, no small 
consolation therein." 

This handbook is unfortunately lost, and the only 
authentic notices of its contents are two passages in 
William of Malmesbury's " Life of Bishop Aldhelm." 
From these it would seem that the handbook was not 
a mere commonplace book of passages copied from 
the books of famous authors, but that Alfred was 
himself gathering in it materials for a history of his 
country. The first passage cited merely corrects a 
statement that Bishop Aldhelm was the nephew of 
King Ina. The second relates how " King Alfred 
mentions, that a popular song which was still sung in 
the streets was composed by Aldhelm ; adding the 
reason why such a man occupied himself with things 
which appear to be frivolous. The people at that 
time being half barbarians, and caring very little about 
church sermons, used to run home as soon as mass 
had been chanted. For this reason the holy man 
would stand on a bridge which leads from the town 



282 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

to the country, and would meet them on their way- 
home like one whose profession is the art of singing. 
Having done so more than once, he obtained the 
favour of the people, who flocked round him. Mixing 
by this device by and by the words of Holy Scripture 
with his playful songs, he led the people back to a 
proper life. Whereas, if he had preferred to act 
severely, and by excommunication, he would never 
have gained anything by it." This one specimen of 
the handbook which remains to us must heighten our 
regret at the loss of the remainder. 

THE HISTORY OF OROSIUS. 

The most arduous of all the King's literary labours 
must have been the reproduction of "The Universal 
History of Paulus Orosius " in Anglo-Saxon, for 
Alfred's work can scarcely be called a translation. 
He abridges, paraphrases, or enlarges at discretion, 
often leaving out whole chapters, and in places in- 
serting entirely new matter. The scope of the work is 
summed up by its author in a passage of the forty- 
third chapter of the last book (which Alfred has 
omitted) in which he addresses his friend St. Augus- 
tine, Bishop of Hippo. " I have now set out," writes 
Orosius, " by the help of Christ, and in obedience 
to your desire, O most blessed father Augustine, the 
lusts and punishments of sinful men, the conflicts 
of the ages, and the judgments of God, from the 
beginning of the world to the present time ; that is 
to say, for 5617 years." This history had the highest 



THE KING AS AUTHOR. 283 

repute in Alfred's time, and for centuries afterwards, 
though it is not a compilation which would now 
interest any but curious readers. 

Orosius was born in Spain about A.D. 380, at Tar- 
ragona, and, like the great majority of the most 
active intellects of his day, took Orders early in life. 
The idea of the Universal History was suggested to 
him by St. Augustine, who appreciated the industry 
and ability of the young Spanish priest, and wished 
for his help in the work which he was himself 
engaged upon. This was his treatise " De civitate 
Dei," intended to refute the scandalous assertions 
of pagan Romans, that Christianity had injured man- 
kind rather than benefited them. These writers 
founded their argument on the misfortunes which 
had befallen the Empire, and particularly on the 
recent sack of Rome by Alaric (A.D. 410). All 
these they attributed to Christianity, maintaining 
that since Christ's coming there had been no pros- 
perity or victories for Rome, whose glory and empire 
had miserably declined. In his " City of God " 
Augustine was himself showing, from the history 
of the Church, that the world was the better for 
Revelation. Having come already to his tenth book, 
the good Bishop seems to have become conscious 
of a weak point in his line of defence. In order 
to prove his case, the world as well as the Church 
must be called as a witness ; and Orosius undertook 
this part of the task by his desire. 

The young Spaniard had already proved himself 
an able penman in a commentary on the heresies 



284 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

of Priscillian and Origen. Augustine's opinion of 
him appears in the letter of introduction with which, 
in A.D. 415, he sent him to St. Jerome, who was then 
living at Bethlehem preparing his translation of the 
Scriptures, which has since become the Vulgate. Not- 
withstanding his successful commentary, it would 
seem there were points as to the nature and origin 
of the soul on which Orosius was not sure of his 
own ground. Augustine, with the utmost frankness, 
admits his own inability to clear them up, and so 
sends the young man on to the greatest living 
scholar, writing of him, " Behold there has come to 
me a godly young man, in catholic peace a brother, 
in age a son, in rank a co-presbyter, Orosius by 
name — of active talents, ready eloquence, ardent 
industry, longing to be in God's house a vessel 
useful for disproving false and destructive doctrines, 
which have destroyed the souls of the Spaniards 
more grievously than the swords of the heathen their 
bodies. He has hastened hither from the shore of 
the ocean, hoping to learn from me whatever of 
these matters he wished to know ; but he has not 
reaped the fruit of his,*labour. First I desired him 
not to trust too much to fame respecting me ; next 
I taught him what I could, and what I could not 
I told him where he might learn, and advised him 
to come to you. As he has willingly acceded to 
my advice, or command, I have asked him on his 
leaving you that he would come to us on his way 
home." On his return to Africa, Orosius compiled 
his History of the World from Adam to Alaric, dedi- 



THE KING AS AUTHOR. 2* 5 

eating it to St. Augustine. It must have been a 
work of extraordinary labour, having regard to the 
opportunities and materials at his command, but is 
now only interesting as a curiosity. Mindful of the 
object of St. Augustine, Orosius sprinkles his narra- 
tion here and there with moral Christian sentiments, 
as when he comes to Busiris sacrificing strangers : 
" I would now that those would answer me who say 
that this world is now worse under Christianity than 
it was under heathendom. Where is there now in 
any part of Christendom that men need dread 
amongst themselves to be sacrificed to any gods?" 
or again when speaking of Phalaris' bull : " Why do 
men complain of these Christian times, and say that 
they are worse than former times, when though they 
were with those kings doing evil at their desire, they 
might yet find no mercy from them ? But now 
kings and emperors, 'though a man sin against their 
will, yet, for love of God, grant forgiveness according 
to the degree of guilt." For the rest, the History 
rambles about from country to country, in a gossiping, 
unconnected manner ; and, though probably the best 
account of human affairs available to Alfred, would 
scarcely detain us but for the additions which he 
has made to the text. 

Of these, by far the most remarkable are the 
accounts of the Northern voyages of Othere and 
Wulfstan, two of Alfred's sea-captains. Orosius' first 
book is devoted to the geography of the world, and 
gives the boundaries of the three continents, and some 
description of the countries and people who inhabit 



286 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

them, until he comes to the Swedes. Then Alfred 
abruptly leaves the text of Orosius, having himself 
something much more satisfactory as to those Northern 
parts to set before his people. " Othere told his lord, 
King Alfred," he breaks in, " that he dwelt northward 
of all the Northmen. He said that he dwelt in the 
land to the northward, along the west sea; he said, 
however, that that land is very long north from thence, 
but it is all waste except in a few T places where the 
Fins here and there dwell, for hunting in the winter, 
and in the summer for fishing in that sea." Then 
follows the description of Othere's famous Northern 
voyage, on which he started with the true instincts of 
an explorer, wishing to know how far the land extended 
to the North, and whether any one lived on the other 
side of the waste. The description is minute of the 
number of days' sail which the old Northman made, 
but where he went precisely has puzzled all the 
scholars who have ever examined the question to 
decide. It seems clear, however, that he actually sailed 
round the North Cape, and down into the White Sea, 
and that Alfred means to include the whole of Europe 
north of the Danube in the word Germania. The only 
people Othere finds in Scandinavia are, the Fins, and 
Beormas: the former letting their lands lie waste, and 
subsisting on fishing, fowling, and hunting ; the latter 
having well-cultivated lands. Othere found in these 
parts whales with "very noble bones in their teeth," 
some of which he brought to the King, and ship-ropes 
made of their hides. But he thought little of this 
species of whale, as he calls them, having far better 



THE KING AS AUTHOR. 287 

whale-hunting in his own country, where the whales 
are most of them fifty ells long. Of these, he said, he 
and five others had killed sixty in two days. 

Othere told his king further of his own home in 
"the shire called Halgoland," and how he had 600 
tame reindeer of his own, six of which were decoy- 
deer, very valuable. Alfred adds that he was one of 
the first men of that country, " but had not more than 
twenty horned cattle, and twenty sheep, and twenty 
swine ; and the little that he ploughed, he ploughed 
with horses." But the wealth of Othere and the 
other great men of those parts, the King adds, comes 
for the most part from rent paid by the Fins— -for 
what does not appear, so we may suppose that it was 
for permission to live, and hunt, and fish. This rent 
" is in skins of animals, and birds' feathers, and in 
whalebone, and in ships' ropes made of whales' hide, 
and of seals." Every man pays according to his birth : 
" the best born, it is said, pay the skins of fifteen 
martens, and five reindeers, and one bear-skin, ten 
ambers of feathers, a bear's or otter's skin kyrtle, and 
two ship-ropes, each sixty ells long." 

Wulfstan's voyage from Sleswig to the mouth of the 
Vistula follows, with gossip worthy of Herodotus as to 
the Esthonians, or inhabitants of Eastland, who lived 
at the junction of the "Elbing" with that river: — 
*• Eastland is very large, and there are in it many 
towns, and in every town a king ; and there is also 
great abundance of honey and fish ; and the king 
and the richest men drink mares' milk, and the poor 
and the slaves drink mead. They have many con- 
tests amongst themselves ; and there is no ale brewed 



288 THE LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREA T. 

among the Esthonians, for there is mead enough." 
These Esthonians, Alfred notes from Wulfstan, have 
the strangest customs with respect to burials and suc- 
cessions. The bodies of dead men are kept unburnt as 
long as possible by the relatives, according to their 
wealth ; kings and other great people lying in state 
for half a year. They are able to manage this because 
among the Esthonians "there is a tribe which can 
produce cold, and so the dead in whom they produce 
that cold lie very long there and do not putrefy ; 
and if any one sets two vessels full of ale or water, 
they contrive that one shall be frozen, be it summer 
or be it winter." It is this discovery which enables 
the funerals of great men to be postponed for long 
intervals, according to the riches of the deceased. 
All the while the body is above ground there are 
drinking and sports, which last till the day of burial 
or burning, as the case may be. " On that day they 
divide the dead man's property into five or six por- 
tions, according to value, and place it out, the largest 
portion about a mile from the dwelling where the 
dead man lies, then another, then a third, and so 
on till it is all laid within the mile. Then all the 
neighbours within five or six miles who have swift 
horses, meet and ride towards the property ; and he 
who has the swiftest horse comes to the first and 
largest portion, and so each after other till the whole 
is taken; and he takes th~ least portion who takes 
that which is nearest the dwelling : and then every 
one rides away with the property, and they may have 
it all ; and on this account swift horses are there 
excessively dear," — as we should conjecture. 



THE KING AS AUTHOR. 289 

But although such accounts of the customs and 
habits of the people amongst whom his captains went 
are duly set down by Alfred, his main object in this 
part of the work is to lay down the geography of 
Germany, the cradle of his own race, as accurately as 
possible. The longest of the other additions by Alfred 
to his authors text is the description of a Roman 
triumph ; but there are a great number of smaller 
additions, such as the reference to the climate of 
Ireland, which Alfred says is warmer than that of 
England, and the fixing of the spot where Caesar 
crossed the Thames at Wallingford. Again, he omits 
constantly whatever in his judgment was immaterial, 
thus in all ways aiming to make his book as useful as 
possible for those whom it w r as his chief aim in all his 
literary work to raise and instruct. 

BEDE'S "ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY:' 

The next important work which bears the King's 
name is the translation of Bede's " Ecclesiastical His- 
tory of the English Nation." Bede was " mass-priest 
of the monastery of the blessed apostles Peter and 
Paul, which is at Were Mouth," and his famous history 
extends from the landing of Julius Caesar to the year 
731, when Keolwulf — to whom the book is dedicated 
as one " very careful of old^men's words and deeds, and 
most of all of the great men of our nation " — was 
king of Northumbria. I that time of peace " many 
in the kingdom of Northumbria, both noble and 
ignoble, yearn more," Bede tells his king, " to give 

S.L. vin* U 



2 9 o LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREA T. 

themselves and their children to monasteries and to 
God's service, than they exercise worldly warfare. 
What end the thing is to have, the coming age will 
see and behold." We have partly seen what came of 
it a century later. Alfred treated the Ecclesiastical 
History in the same manner as he had treated Orosius; 
freely omitting, and abridging; and correcting when 
his own knowledge as a West Saxon was more accu- 
rate than that of the venerable mass-priest, who had 
probably never wandered fifty miles from the monas- 
tery at Were Mouth. 

BOETHIUS. 

The " Consolations of Philosophy," which Alfred 
also translated, forms a striking contrast to the two 
historical works already noticed. Gibbon calls it " a 
golden book, not unworthy the leisure of Plato or 
Tully ;" and Dr. Hook, "the handbook of the Middle 
Ages, for all who united piety with philosophy ; " and 
it has had two other illustrious English translators — 
Chaucer and Queen Elizabeth. 

Boethius was a pious and learned Roman senator, 
who was consul A.D. 487, two years before the inva- 
sion of Italy by Theodoric the Ostrogoth. For many 
years he continued in favour at court, and lived to see 
the consulate of his sons. But he incurred the anger 
of Theodoric for an attack on the Arian heresy, and 
for the boldness with which he maintained the ancient 
rights of the senate, .and^ was banished from Rome, 
and imprisoned at Pavia. Here, before his execution, 
A.D. 526, he wrote the " Consolations, 5 ' in the form of 



THE KING AS AUTHOR. 291 

a dialogue between himself, or his mind, and Wisdom, 
or Reason. The burden of the work is, that every 
fortune is good for men, whether it seem good to 
them or evil, and that we ought with all our power to 
inquire after God, every man according to the measure 
of his understanding, a philosophy which Alfred's 
whole life illustrated, and whi$h he was naturally 
anxious to impress upon his people. 

There is a short preface to the King's version, which 
is held by Dr. Pauli to be the work of some other 
hand ; but if not by Alfred, it is full of the manliness 
and humility which distinguished him, and explains 
so well the method of all his literary work, that it 
cannot be omitted here : — 

"King Alfred was translator of this book, and 
turned it from* book-Latin into English, as it is now 
done. Sometimes he set word by word, sometimes 
meaning by meaning, as he the nj^st plainly and most 
clearly could explain it, for th^v%rious and manifold 
worldly occupations which often busied him both in 
mind and in body. The occupations are to us very 
difficult to be numbered which in his days came 
upon the kingdom which he had undertaken, and yet 
when he had learned this book, and turned it from 
the Latin into the English language, he afterwards 
composed it in verse, as it is now done. And he now 
prays, and for God's name implores every one of those 
who list to read this book, that he would pray for him, 
and not blame him, if he more rightly understand it 
than he could. For every, rtian must, according to 
the measure of his understanding, and according to 

U 2 



292 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

his leisure, speak that which he speaketh, and do that 
which he doeth." 

There is extant a translation of Boethius into Saxon 
verse, as mentioned in this preface, but it would seem, 
in the judgment of the best scholars, not to have been 
the work of Alfred. 

GREGORY'S R.1ST0RAL. 

Gregory's u Pastoral Care" was also translated 
by the King; to it is prefixed the introduction 
addressed by him to Bishop Werefrith, from which 
quotations have been already made. It commences 
with a description of the sad decay oi learning in 
England, and an exhortation to the Bishop that he, 
who is at leisure from the tilings of this world, will 
bestow the wisdom which God Ik: him wh 

ever he is able to bestow it. " Think what punish- 
ment shall come upon us on account o\ this world, 
when we have not ourselves Loved it in the I 
degree, or enabled other men so to do. We have had 
the name alone of Christians, and \ of the 

virtues. When I then called to mind all I 
remembered how I saw, ere that all in them 
waste and burnt up, how the churches throughout all 
the English race stood filled with tr s and be 

and also a great multitude of God's servants; 
knew very little use of those books, for that they o 
not understand anything of thorn, because they v 
not written in their own L e, sue 1 ! . 

elder* spoke." The King goes on to wonder v." 
good and nvise men, who lov< 



THE KING AS A UTHOR. 293 

and got wealth and left it, had never been willing to 
turn any of the books they knew so well into their 
own language. But he soon answered hini5elf that 
they must have left it undone of set purpose, that 
there might be more wisdom and knowledge of 
languages in the land. However, he will do what 
he can now to remedy all this. " Wherefore I think 
it better, if it also appears so to you, that we two 
should translate some books, which are the most 
necessary for all men to understand ; that we should 
turn these into that tongue which we all can know, 
and so bring it about, as we very easily may, with 
God's help, if we have rest, that all the youth that 
now is among the English race, of free men, that have 
property, so that they can apply themselves to these 
things, may be committed to others for the sake of 
instruction, so long as . they have no power for any 
other employments, until the time that they may 
know well how to read English writing. Let men 
afterwards further teach them Latin, those whom 
they are willing further to teach, and whom they wish 
to advance to a higher state. 

" When I then called to mind how the learning of 
the Latin tongue before this was fallen away through- 
out the English race, though many knew how to read 
writing in English ; then began I, among other unlike 
and manifold businesses of this kingdom, to turn into 
English the book that is named in Latin ' Pastoralis/ 
and in English the ' Hind's book,' one-while word 
for word, another-while meaning for meaning, so far 
as I learned it with Phlegmund my archbishop, and 



294 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

with Asser my bishop, and with Grimbold my mass- 
priest, and with John my mass-priest. After I had 
then learned them, so that I understood them, and so 
that I might read them with the fullest comprehension, 
I turned them into English, and to each bishop's see 
in my kingdom will send one, and on each is an ' aestel,' 
that is of the value of fifty mancuses, and I bid, in 
God's name, that no man undo the aestel from the 
books, nor the books from the minster. It is unknown 
how long there may be so learned bishops as now, 
thank God, are everywhere. For this, I w r ould that they 
always should be at their place, unless the bishop will 
have them with him, or they be anywhere lent, or 
some one write others by them." 

There are several manuscript copies of the "Pastoral 
Care " in Anglo-Saxon in the public libraries of the 
coup y, which are supposed to be some of those re- 
ferred to in Alfred's introduction as having been sent 
by him as presents to his bishops. The aestel, worth 
fifty mancuses, which accompanied each copy, has 
disappeared. Alfred, to judge from the care with 
which he provided for its circulation, places more 
value on this than on any other of his works. To us 
it is, perhaps, the least valuable, being occupied chiefly 
with the difficulty and importance of the teacher's or 
priest's office, the danger of filling it unworthily, and 
the duty of all who are thoroughly competent to 
undertake it to do so, bearing in mind that he who is 
himself under the dominion of evil habits makes a 
bad intercessor for, or teacher of, other men. 



THE KING AS AUTHOR. 295 



BLOSSOM GATHERINGS FROM ST. AUGUSTINE. 

The " sayings which King Alfred gathered " out of 
the writings of St. Augustine are perhaps the most 
instructive of all his works, as they show best where 
his natural bent carried him, and what he himself 
valued most, and desired most to give to his people. 
His own portion of the work consists of some three 
clauses of introductory matter. These begin so ab- 
ruptly, that it is supposed that some sentences are 
lost. Alfred describes himself as in a wood full of 
comely trees, fit for javelins and stud shafts, and 
helves to all tools, and bay timbers and bolt timbers. 
14 In every tree I saw something," the King writes, 
"which I needed at home, therefore I advise every 
one who is able, and has many wains, that he ^rade 
to the same wood where I cut the stud shaft '. and 
there fetch more for himself, and load his wain with fair 
rods, that he may wind many a neat wall, and set 
many a comely house, and build many a fair town of 
them ; and thereby may dwell merrily and softly, so 
as I now yet have not done. But He who taught me, 
to whom the wood was agreeable, he may make me to 
dwell more softly in this temporary cottage, the while 
that I am in this world, and also in the everlasting home 
which He has promised us through St. Augustine, and 
St. Gregory, and St. Jerome, and through many other 
holy fathers ; as I believe also that for the merits of 
all these He will make the way more convenient than 
it was before, and especially enlighten the eyes of my 
mind, so that I may search out the right way to the 



296 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

everlasting home and the everlasting glory, and the 
everlasting rest which is promised us through those 
holy fathers. May it be so ! " Then he reverts to his 
original idea of working in a wood. " It is no wonder 
though men swink in timber working, and in the car- 
rying and the building : but every man wishes, after 
he has built a cottage on his lord's lease by his help, 
that he may sometimes rest him therein, and hunt, 
and fowl, and fish, and use it every way under the 
lease, both on water and on land, until the time that 
he earn book-land and everlasting heritage through 
his lord's mercy. So do the wealthy Giver, who wields 
both these temporary cottages and the eternal homes. 
May He who shaped both, and wields both, grant me 
that I be meet for each, both here to be profitable 
and thither to come !" There is something very touch- 
ing in this opening, in which Alfred allows his fancy 
to play round the idea of a woodman, like one of his 
own churls, cutting timber for his house and his 
weapons, and building on his lord's land, in the hope 
of one day realizing the object of every Saxon man's 
ambition, a permanent dwelling, bookland of his own ; 
and in the side-glance at his own life of incessant 
toil, and longing for a home where a man may dwell 
'* merrily and softly" in summer and winter, "so as I 
now yet have not done." It is only a glance which he 
allows himself, and then the strong fighter turns back to 
his work, trusting that He who has shaped and wields 
both lives may grant him " both here to be profitable 
and thither to come." One more short passage in 
troduces his gatherings to those for whom they were 



THE KING AS AUTHOR. 297 

made. " Augustine, Bishop of Carthage," he writes, 
"wrought two books about his own mind. The books 
are called ' Soliloquiorum,' that is, of his mind's musing 
and doubting, how his reason answered his mind 
when his mind doubted about anything, or wished 
to know anything which it could not understand 
before." 

The " blossom gatherings " all bear upon the 
problem with which Alfred then opens them, by the 
quotation of St. Augustine's saying, "that his mind 
went often asking of and searching out various and 
rare things, and most of all about himself, what he 
was : whether his mind and his soul w r ere mortal and 
perishing, or ever living and eternal ; and again about 
his good, what it was, and what good it were best for 
him to do, and what evil to avoid." 

THE KING'S PROVERBS, 

The last of the works attributed to Alfred which 
need be specially mentioned, is the collection of pro- 
verbs, or sayings, in verse and prose, found amongst 
the Cotton manuscripts. It is a compilation of much 
later date than the ninth century, written in a broken 
dialect, between the original Saxon and English. The 
compiler has put together some thirty-one stanzas 
and paragraphs, each of which begins, " Thus quoth 
Alfred, England's comfort," or " England's herdsman," 
or " England's darling," and the collection is prefaced 
by a short notice in verse of the occasion on which 
the sayings are supposed to have been spoken. 



298 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

" At Sifford there sate many thanes, 
Many bishops, many learned, 
With earls, and awful knights ; 
There was Earl Alfrich very learned in the law ; 
There also was Alfred, England's herdsman, 

England's darling ; 
He was king of England, he taught them, 

All who could hear him, 
How they should lead their lives. 
Alfred was a king of England, that was very strong. 
He was both king and scholar, he loved well God's work ; 
He was wise and advised in his talk ; 
He was the wisest man that was in all England." 

This introduction would seem to point to some 
particular witan, held probably at Seaford, or Shif- 
ford, near Bampton, in Oxfordshire, the tradition of 
which was still fresh. There is no mention in the 
Saxon Chronicle, or elsewhere, of any such assembly, 
but some of the sayings bear a strong resemblance 
to parts of Alfred's writings, and may have been 
accurately handed down and reported. A specimen 
or two will be enough. The opening saying runs : — 

" Thus quoth Alfred, England's comfort : 
Oh that you would now love and long after your Lord ! 
He would govern you wisely, 
That you might have honour in this world 
And yet unite your souls to Christ." 

Then come a series of instructions to kings and 
officers of state, on the education of young men and 
children, and on the use of wealth, in which the 
King, speaking to his nobles and to his children, 
enforces the direct responsibility of all men to Christ, 
and the worthlessness of wealth unless discreetly used, 



THE KING AS AUTHOR. 299 



—old ideas enough, a thousand years ago, and as 
needful of repetition then as now. 

" Thus quoth Alfred, England's comfort ; the earl 
And the Atheling are under the king, 
^ To govern the land according to law ; 

The priest and the knight must both alike judge uprightly ; 
For as a man sows 
So shall he reap, 
And every man's judgment comes home to him to his own doors." 

In almost the last of the series, the King addresses 
his son : 

" Thus quoth Alfred : My dear son, sit thou now 
beside me, and I will deliver thee true instruction. 
My son, I feel that my hour is near, my face is pale, 
my days are nearly run. We must soon part. I 
shall to another world, and thou shalt be left alone 
with all my wealth. I pray thee, for thou art my 
dear child, strive to be a father and a lord to thy 
people ; be thou the children's father, and the widow's 
friend ; comfort thou the poor and shelter the weak, 
and with all thy might right that which is wrong. 
And, my son, govern thyself by law, then shall the 
Lord love thee, and God above all things shall be thy 
reward. Call thou upon Him to advise thee in all 
thy need, and so He shall help thee the better to 
compass that which thou wouldest." 

Besides the works already mentioned, there is a 
long list of original writings and translations attri- 
buted to Alfred. Of the former, Spelman gives ten, 
including " selections from the laws of the Greeks, 
Britons, Saxons, and Danes," and original treatises 



300 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT, 

"against unjust judges," on "the uncertain fortunes 
of kings," and " the acts of magistrates," and " a 
manual of meditations." Of the latter, the " Dia- 
logues of Pope Gregory," and translations of parts of 
the Scriptures, are the only works of his as to which 
there is anything like a concurrence of testimony, and 
it is more than probable that the former was the work 
of Bishop Werefrith under Alfred's supervision. An 
old manuscript history of Ely is the authority for the 
statement that he translated the whole of the Old 
and New Testaments into Saxon ; but the better 
opinion seems to be, that the Psalms were the only 
portions of the Scriptures which he undertook to 
translate, and that he was at work on his Saxon 
Psalter at the time of his death. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

THE KING'S DEATH AND WILL. 

" A good life hath few years, but a good name endurdh for ever" 
" Honourable age is not that which standeth in length of time, nor that 
is measured by number of years. 

The world's hardest workers and noblest benefactors 
have rarely been long-lived. The constant wear and 
stress of such a life as Alfred's must tell its tale, and 
the wonder is, not that he should have broken down 
so soon, but that he should have borne the strain 
so long. 

In the fifty-fourth year of his age, "six days before 
All-Hallowmass," or on the 26th of October, 901, 
"died Alfred, the son of Ethelwulf. He was king 
over the whole English nation, except that part which 
was under the dominion of the Danes, and he held 
the kingdom a year and a half less than thirty years, 
and then Edward, his son, succeeded him." Such is 
the simple account of the great King's ending in the 
Saxon Chronicle. It understates the length of his 
reign by a year. Florence and the other chroniclers 
tell us nothing more, except that his body was buried 
in the new monastery at Winchester, which he had him- 
self founded, and which his son \f&$ destined to finish. 



302 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREA T. 

We know neither the place or cause of his death ; 
and there is some dispute as to his burial-place. 
Some of the chroniclers name the church of St. Peter ; 
others, the New Minster monastery. The conflicting 
accounts are reconciled by a story, that the canons of 
the cathedral church, from jealousy of Grimbald and 
the monks of the new monastery, declared that the 
spirit of Alfred could not rest, but might be seen 
wandering at night within their precincts ; whereupon 
Edward at once removed his father's coffin to the 
monastery. In the time of Henry I. when the abbey 
of New Minster was removed to Hyde from the 
immediate neighbourhood of the cathedral, Alfred's 
remains were carried with them, and there rested till 
the Reformation, when the royal tombs were broken 
open at the dissolution of the monastery. But the 
" pious Dr. Richard Fox," bishop of Winchester, had 
the remains of the kjngs collected carefully and put 
into chests of lead, ^vith inscriptions on each of them, 
showing whose bones were within ; and the chests were 
placed, under his supervision, on the top of a wall of 
rare workmanship, which he was building to enclose 
the presbytery of the cathedral. Here the dust of the 
great King rested till the taking of Winchester by 
the Parliamentary troops, under Sir William Waller, 
on the 14th of December, 1642. The Puritan soldiers, 
amongst other outrages, threw down and broke open 
Bishop Fox's leaden chests, and scattered the contents 
all over the cathedral. When the first excitement of 
the troops had cooled down, what were left of the 
bones of our early kings were reverently collected, 



THE KING \S BE A TH AND WILL. 303 



*nd carried to Oxford and " lodged in a repository 
building next the public library." 

The country had enjoyed such profound peace for 
the four years preceding the Kings death, that for 
two of them the Saxon Chronicle has no entry at all, 
and only mentions the deaths of the Alderman of 
Wiltshire, and the Bishop of London, in 898. In 
Simeon's Chronicle it is stated that Bishop Eardulf, 
who had carried the remains of St. Cuthbert about 
for nine years through the northern counties, hiding 
from King Halfdene's robber troops, and who had at 
last been able to deposit them in a shrine of his own 
cathedral, died in the same year with Alfred. It is 
pleasant to know that our " most noble miser of his 
time " must have seen of the travail of his soul and 
been satisfied in those last years. His grievous disease 
had abated in his forty-fifth year, and he closed his 
eyes on peace at home and abroad, in church and 
state, abundance in the field and in the stall, and 
order and justice established in every corner of his 
kingdom : " His name shall endure under the sun 
amongst the posterities, and all the people shall praise 
him." 

The last monument of his justice and patriotism 
is his will, of which happily a perfect copy was pre- 
served in the archives of the abbey of New Minster. 
The opening recitals have been already quoted. 
They show how anxious he was that the memory 
of the agreement between himself and his brother 
should be kept alive; and now/ in pursuance of that 
agreement, he devises eight manors to ^Etheline, the 



304 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

elder son of his brother Ethelward ; and to Ethelwald, 
the younger, the manors of Guildford, Godalming, 
and Steyning. The principal part of his lands in 
Wilts and Somersetshire, including the famous royal 
burgh of Wedmore, he leaves to Edward, coupled 
with a touching reference to some arrangement which 
he had made at some time with his tenants at Ched- 
dar : " And I am a petitioner to the families at Ceodre, 
that tHey will choose him (Edward) on the condi- 
tions that we had formerly expressed." All his 
other children have gifts of manors, and to his wife 
he leaves the manors of Wantage, Lambourn, and 
Ethandune. The field of Ashdown is scarcely three 
miles from Lambourn, and may well have been in- 
cluded in that manor. If this be so, the King left 
to his faithful helpmate, his birthplace, and the scenes 
of his two great victories. 

His personalty is also distributed ju^ly and muni- 
ficently. To each of hie sons he leaves 500 pounds ; 
to his w T ife and daughters, 100 pounds each. To each 
of his aldermen and his nephews, 100 mancuses ; and 
to Ethelred, a sword of the value of 100 mancuses. 
Like legacies are left to Archbishop Ethelred, and to 
Bishops Werefrith and Asser. Then turning to his 
servants and the poor, he bequeaths " 200 pounds for 
those men that follow me, to whom I now at Easter- 
tide give money," to be divided between them after 
the manner that he had up to this time distributed 
to them. " Also," he continues, " let them distribute 
for me, and for my father, and for the friends that 
he interceded for, and I intercede for, 200 poinds, — 



THE KING'S DEATH AND WILL. 305 

50 to the mass-priests over all my kingdom, 50 to 
the poor ministers of God, 50 to the distressed poor, 
50 to the church that I shall rest at. And I know 
not certainly whether there be so much money; nor 
I know not but that there may be more, but so I 
suppose. If it be more, be it all common to them 
to whom I have bequeathed money. And I will that 
my aldermen, and councillors, be all there together 
and so distribute it." 

He then declares that in former times, when he 
had more property and more relations,«he had made 
other wills which he had burned, all at least that he 
could recover. If any of these should be found, let 
it stand for nothing. And he wills that all those 
who are in possession of any of the lands disposed 
of by his father's will should fulfil the intentions 
there expressed the soonest they may, and that if any 
debt of his remains outstanding his relations should 
pay it. 

Then follows the passage on the strength of which 
Alfred is cited as the author of entails in England : 
" And I will that the men to whom I have given my 
book-lands do not give it from my kindred after their 
day, but I will that it go unto the highest hand to me 
unless any one of them have children, then it is to 
me most agreeable that it go to that issue on the 
male side so long as any be worthy. My grandfather 
gave his lands to the spear side, not to the spindle 
side. Wherefore if I have given to any woman what 
he had acquired, then let my relations redeem it, if 
they will have it, while she is living ; if otherwise, lei 

s. u via. X 



3 o6 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

it go after their day as we have determined. For 
this reason I ordain that they pay for it, because 
they will succeed to my estates, which I may give 
either to the spindle side or the spear side, as I 
will." 

Lastly, he is mindful of the slaves on his lands, 
whose condition he had greatly improved, but whom 
he had not been able entirely to free. " And I 
beseech, in God's name, and in His saints', that none 
of my relations do obstruct none of the freedom of 
those I have redeemed. And for me the West Saxon 
nobles have pronounced as lawful, that I may leave 
them free or bond, whether I will. But I, for God's 
love and my soul's health, will that they be masters 
of their freedom and of their will ; and I, in the living 
God's name, entreat that no man do not disturb them, 
neither by money exaction, nor by no manner of 
means, that they may not choose such man as they 
will. And I will that they restore to the families at 
Domerham their land deeds and their free liberty, 
such master to choose as may to them be most 
agreeable, for my sake, and for Ethelfleda's, and for 
the friends that she did intercede for, and I do inter- 
cede for." These Domerham families of churls would 
seem to have dwelt on some estate in wliich the lady 
of Mercia was jointly interested with her father. 
" And let them " (my relations and beneficiaries) " seek 
also with a living price for my soul's health, as it may 
be and is most fitting, and as ye to forgive me shall 
be disposed." 

These are the last words which " England's Shep- 



THE KING'S DEATH AND WILL. 307 

herd " left to his country. It is no easy task for any 
one who has been studying his life and works to set 
reasonable bounds to their reverence, and enthusiasm, 
for the man. Lest the reader should think my esti- 
mate tainted with the proverbial weakness of bio- 
graphers for their heroes, let them turn to the words 
in which the earliest, and the last of the English his- 
torians of that time, sum up the character of Alfred. 
Florence of Worcester, writing in the century after 
his death, speaks of him as "that famous, warlike, vic- 
torious king; the zealous protector of widows, scholars, 
orphans, and the poor ; skilled in the Saxon poets ; 
affable and liberal to all ; endowed with prudence, 
fortitude, justice, and temperance ; most patient under 
the infirmity which he daily suffered ; a most stern in- 
quisitor in executing justice ; vigilant and devoted in 
the service of God." Mr. Freeman, in his " History 
of the Norman Conquest," has laid down the por- 
trait in bold and lasting colours, in a passage as 
truthful as it is eloquent, which those who are familiar 
with it will be glad to meet again, while those who 
do not know it will be grateful to me for substi- 
tuting for any poor words of my own. 

"Alfred, the unwilling author of these great changes, 
is the most perfect character in history. He is a 
singular instance of a prince who has become a hero 
of romance, who, as such, has had countless imaginary 
exploits attributed to him, but to whose character 
romance has done no more than justice, and who 
appears in exactly the same light in history and in 
fable. No other man on record has ever so thoroughly 

X 2 



308 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREA T. 

united all the virtues both of the ruler and of the 
private man. In no other man on record were so 
many virtues disfigured by so little alloy. A saint 
without superstition, a scholar without ostentation, a 
warrior all whose wars were fought in the defence of 
his country, a conqueror whose laurels were never 
stained by cruelty, a prince never cast down by adver- 
sity, never lifted up to insolence in the day of triumph 
— there is no other name in history to compare with 
his. Saint Lewis comes nearest to him in the union 
of a more than monastic piety with the highest civil, 
military, and domestic virtues. Both of them stand 
forth in honourable contrast to the abject superstition 
of some other royal saints, who were so selfishly 
engaged in the care of their own souls that they 
refused either to raise up heirs for their throne, or to 
strike a blow on behalf of their people. But even in 
Saint Lewis we see a disposition to forsake an imme- 
diate sphere of duty for the sake of distant and un- 
profitable, however pious and glorious, undertakings. 
The true duties of the King of the French clearly lay 
in France, and not in Egypt or Tunis. No such 
charge lies at the door of the great King of the West 
Saxons. With an inquiring spirit which took in the 
whole world, for purposes alike of scientific inquiry 
and of Christian benevolence, Alfred never forgot that 
his first duty was to his own people. He forestalled 
our own age in sending expeditions to explore the 
Northern Ocean, and in sending alms to the distant 
Churches of India; but he neither forsook his crown, 
like some of his predecessors, nor neglected his duties, 



THE KING'S DEATH AND WILE 309 

like some of his successors. The virtue of Alfred, like 
the virtue of Washington, consisted in no marvellous 
displays of superhuman genius, but in the simple, 
straightforward discharge of the duty of the moment. 
But Washington, soldier, statesman, and patriot, like 
Alfred, has no claim to Alfred's further characters 
of saint and scholar. William the Silent, too, has 
nothing to set against Alfred's literary merits ; and in 
his career, glorious as it is, there is an element of 
intrigue and chicanery utterly alien to the noble sim- 
plicity of both Alfred and Washington. The same 
union of zeal for religion and learning with the highest 
gifts of the warrior and the statesman is found, on a 
w T ider field of action, in Charles the Great. But even 
Charles cannot aspire to the pure glory of Alfred. 
Amidst all the splendour of conquest and legislation, 
we cannot be blind to an alloy of personal ambition, 
of personal vice, to occasional unjust aggressions and 
occasional acts of cruelty. Among our own later 
princes, the great Edward alone can bear for a 
moment the comparison with his glorious ancestor. 
And, when tried by such a standard, even the great 
Edward fails. Even in him we do not see the same 
wonderful unicn of gifts and virtues which so seldom, 
meet together; we cannot acquit Edward of occa- 
sional acts of violence, of occasional recklessness as to 
means ; we cannot attribute to him the pure, simple, 
almost childlike disinterestedness which marks the 
character of Alfred." 

Let Wordsworth, on behalf of the poets of England 
complete the picture. 



310 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

" Behold a pupil of the monkish gown, 
The pious Alfred, king to justice dear ! 
Lord of the harp and liberating spear ; 
Mirror of princes ! Indigent renown 
Might range the starry ether for a crown 
Equal to his deserts, who, like the year, 
Pours forth his bounty, like the day doth cheer, 
And awes like night, with mercy- tempered frown. 
Ease from this noble miser \pf his time 
No moment steals ; pain narrows not his cares — 
Though small his kingdom as a spark or gem, 
Of Alfred boasts remote Jerusalem, 
And Christian India, through her wide-spread clime, 
In sacred converse gifts with Alfred shares. " 



CHAPTER XXV. 

THE KING'S SUCCESSORS. 
" A good man leaveth an inheritance unto his children's children." 

The death of Alfred was the signal for a revolt of 
his younger nephew Ethelwald, against the decision 
of the witan, who named Edward as his father's suc- 
cessor. Ethelwald was a reckless, violent man, who 
had scandalized the nation by taking to wife a nun, 
" without the King's leave, and against the Bishop's 
command." He seized the royal castles of Wimborne 
and Christchurch, and in the former the Chronicle 
tells us, " sat down with those who had submitted to 
him, and had obstructed all the approaches towards 
him, and said that he would do one of two things — or 
there live, or there lie. But, notwithstanding that, he 
stole away by night and sought the army in North- 
umbria, who received him as their over-lord, and 
became obedient to him." 

This effort of Ethelwald only proved the soundness 
of the foundations of the kingdom which Alfred had 
laid. The Pretender fled from Wessex and Mercia 
without being able to break the peace, and was not 
heard of again for two years. In 904, however, he 
came with a fleet of Northmen to Essex, and a portion 



LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREA T. 



of the Danish people there submitted to him. The 
next year he was strong enough to attack his cousin, 
and penetrated through Mercia to the Thames, which 
he crossed at Cricklade, and committed some depre- 
dations in Berkshire. Edward was not in time to 
catch him in Wessex, and so followed him with a 
strong force across Watling Street, into East Anglia, 
and there overran " all the land between the dikes 
and the Ouse, as far north as the fens." Not having 
been able to bring Ethelwald to an action, Edward 
turned south again, and, being in an enemy's country, 
and in face of a strong army, " proclaimed through 
his whole force that they should all return together. 
Then the Kentish men remained there behind, not- 
withstanding his orders, and seven messengers he 
had sent to them ;" and, Ethelwald falling on them, 
a general action was brought on, in which the loss on 
both sides was very great, but on the Danish side both 
Ethelwald, and Eohric king of East Anglia, were 
slain, and soon afterwards Edward made peace with 
the East Angles and Northumbrians. 

Ethelred of Mercia died in 910, and London and 
Oxford w r ere incorporated in Wessex. In the next 
year the Danes broke the peace again, relying pro- 
bably on the weakness of a woman's rule in Mercia. 
But the lady of Mercia proved as formidable an enemy 
as her lord. In concert with her brother she not only 
drove the Danes out of her own boundaries, but won 
from them, and made safe, one stronghold after 
another in the midland counties. Thus in 913, 
while Edward invaded Essex, and took and fortified 



THE KING 'S S UCCESSORS. 3 1 3 

Hertford, u Ethelfieda, lady of the Mercians, went 
with all the Mercians to Tamworth, and there built 
a fortress early in the summer ; and, before Lammas, 
another at Stafford. ,, 

Again, in 915, she fortifies Cherbury, Warburton, 
and Runcorn; in 916, defeats the Welsh, and storms 
Brecknock; and in 917, "God helping her, got pos- 
session of the fortress which is called Derby, and all 
that owed obedience thereto : and there within the 
gates were slain four of her thanes, w T hich caused her 
much sorrow." Edward in the meanwhile was steadily 
extending his frontier, and gaining the allegiance of 
many Danish nobles, such as Thurkytel, the earl, who 
" sought to him to be his lord, and all the captains, 
and almost all the chief men who owed obedience to 
Bedford, and also many of those who owed obedience 
to Northampton." The lady of Mercia died in 918 at 
Tamworth, when the whole of Mercia came to Edward, 
whose niece Elfwina, the only child of Ethelred and 
Ethelfieda, came to her uncle's court in Wessex. 

Thus the kingdom grew under his hand, disturbed 
frequently by raids of the Welsh and Danes, but on 
the whole steadily and surely. The North Welsh 
sought him to their over-lord in 922, and in 924 "the 
King of the Scots, and the whole nation of the Scots, 
and all those who dwelt in Northumbria, chose him 
for father and for lord." 

In the next year he died, and Athelstan was elected 
by the witan, and consecrated at Kingston. Dunstan, 
who was fated to bring such misery on the royal 
family, and on the nation, was born in the same year. 



314 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

For fifteen years Athelstan ruled with vigour and 
success, extending still the English frontiers. He 
gave the South Britons the Tamar instead of the Exe 
as their boundary, and occupied Northumbria himself 
after Sigtric, the king, had deserted his Saxon wife 
Edith, Athelstan's sister. In 937, Scots, Danes, Welsh, 
and a great host from Ireland, led by Anlaf, a son of 
Sigtric by a former marriage, made a desperate effort 
to shake off the over-lordship of Athelstan. Anlaf 
landed in the Humber, and after effecting a junction 
with his allies, laid siege to York, which was held for 
Athelstan. The siege was raised by the news of 
Athelstan's crossing the Humber on his march to the 
relief of the northern capital, and soon afterwards the 
battle of Brumby, near Beverley, was fought, in which 
the allies were utterly defeated and five kings slain. 
The victory was so complete, and of so great signi- 
ficance, that even the Saxon Chronicle breaks away 
from its usual severe matter-of-fact form into a song 
of triumph. A spirited poem, describing the battle, 
and singing the praises of Athelstan, and his young 
brother Edmund the Etheling, is given for the year 
937. The ring of it is like the death-song of Regner 
Lodbrog, as it tells how 



" West Saxons onward That they in war's works 

Throughout the day The better men were 

In bands In the battle-stead 

Pursued the footsteps At the meeting of spears, 

Of the loathed nations. That they on the slaughter field 

* * * With Edward's offspring played.'' 

They had no cause to laugh 



THE KING'S SUCCESSORS. 



315 



and how 

" King and Etheling And the grey beast 

Both together Wolf of the wood. 

Their country sought, Carnage greater has not been 

West Saxon land ; In this island 

Leaving behind them, Ever yet, 

The corses to devour, Of people slain 

The yellow kite, By edge of sword ; 

The swarthy raven As books us tell, 

With horned nib, Old writers, 

And dusky * pada,' Since from the East hither 

Erne white-tailed, Angles and Saxons 

Greedy war-hawk, Came to land." 

Edmund the Etheling succeeded his brother in 940, 
and on his death in 946, Edred, the youngest of the 
sons of Edward, was elected king ; Edwi and Edgar, 
the sons of Edmund, being still minors. Both of these 
grandsons of Alfred pursued their father's policy, and 
Edred finally annexed Northumbria, and divided it 
into shires, over which he set his own earls. He died 
in 955. 

Thus for two generations Alfred's descendants in- 
herited his courage and ability, and carried on with 
signal success one part of his work. To quote Words- 
worth's sonnets once more : — 

" The race of Alfred covet glorious pains 
When dangers threaten, dangers ever new, 
Black tempests bursting, blacker still in view ! 
But manly sovereignty its hold retains : 
The root sincere, the branches bold to strive 
With the fierce tempest." 

There is, unfortunately, little proof of the truth of 
the beautiful concluding lines, — 



316 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT, 

" While within the round 
Of their protection gentle virtues thrive ; 
As oft, mid some green spot of open ground 
Wide as the oak extends its dewy gloom 
The fostered hyacinths spread their purple bloom." 

Rather it would seem that in that half century, 
during which England had become one vast camp, 
the learning and the arts of peace which Alfred had 
so wisely and nobly fostered were fast slipping away 
from the people ; and corruptions had again crept into 
monasteries and convents (enriched rapidly by the 
race of devout warrior princes), which rendered neces- 
sary the reforms of Dunstan and Bishop Ethelwald 
on the one hand, and led to the disastrous collisions 
between Church and State on the other. But we are 
not concerned with the later history, and it is only 
noticed thus far to show that the King's example 
continued to inspire his son and son's sons. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

THE END OF THE WHOLE MATTER. 

" Hear therefore, O ye kings, and understand ; learn, ye that be judges 

of the ends of the earth. 
" For power is give )i you of the Lord, and sovereignty fro?n the Highest, 

•who shall t7y your works, and search out your councils." 

The readers of this series are specially invited to look 
at the men and events which are brought before them 
from a religious point of view. That is the central 
idea of the books, and the writers may fairly assume 
that the public they are addressing is a Christian 
public. The controversy which has arisen again in 
our time, and is deeply stirring men's minds, as to the 
foundations of our faith — the question whether Chris- 
tianity is or is not true — does not directly concern us 
her& That controversy must always be one of deep 
interest, even to Christians who take no part in it. 
We ought to welcome with all our hearts the search- 
ing scrutiny, which students and philosophers of all 
Christian nations, and of all shades of belief, whether 
Christian or not, are engaged upon, as to the facts on 
which our faith rests. The more thorough that 
scrutiny is, the better should we be pleased. We 
may not wholly agree with the last position which 



318 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT, 

the ablest investigators have laid down, that unless 
the truth of the history of our Lord — the facts of His 
life, death, resurrection, and ascension — can be proved 
by ordinary historical evidence, applied according to 
the most approved and latest methods, Christianity 
must be given up as not true. We know that our 
own certainty as to these facts does not rest on a 
critical historical investigation, while we rejoice that 
such an investigation should be made by those who 
have leisure, and who are competent for it. At the 
same time, as we also know that the methods and 
principles of historical investigation are constantly 
improving, and being better understood, and that 
the critics of the next generation will work, in all 
human likelihood, at as great an advantage in this 
inquiry over those who are now engaged in it, as our 
astronomers and natural philosophers enjoy over 
Newton and Franklin — and as new evidence may 
turn up any day which may greatly modify their con- 
clusions — we cannot suppose that there is the least 
chance of their settling the controversy in our time. 
Nor, even if we thought them likely to arrive at 
definite conclusions, can we consent to wait the result 
of their investigations, important and interesting as 
these will be. Granting then cheerfully, that if these 
facts on the study of which they are engaged are not 
facts — if Christ was not crucified, and did not rise 
from the dead, and ascend to God His Father — there 
has been no revelation, and Christianity will infallibly 
go the way of all lies, either under their assaults or 
those of their successors — they must pardon us if 



THE END OF THE WHOLE MATTER. 319 

even at the cost of being thought and called fools for 
our pains, we deliberately elect to live our lives on 
the contrary assumption. It is useless to tell us that 
we know nothing of these things, that we can know 
nothing until their critical examination is over ; we 
can only say, " Examine away; but we do know some- 
thing of this matter, whatever you may assert to the 
contrary, and mean to live on that knowledge.'' 

But while we cannot suspend our judgment on the 
question until we know how the critics and scholars 
have settled it, we must do justice, before passing on, 
to the single-mindedness, the reverence, the resolute 
desire for the truth before all things, wherever the 
search for it may land them, which characterises 
many of those who are no longer of our faith, and are 
engaged in this inquiry, or have set it aside as hope- 
less, and are working at other tasks. The great 
advance of natural science within the last few years, 
and the devotion with which many of our ablest and 
best men are throwing themselves into this study, are 
clearing the air in all the higher branches of human 
thought, and making possible a nation, and in the 
end a world, of truthful men — that blessedest result of 
all the strange conflicts and problems of the age, 
which the wisest men have foreseen in their most hope- 
ful moods. In this grand movement even those who 
are nominally, and believe themselves to be really, 
against us, are for us ; all at least who are truthful 
and patient workers. For them, too, the spirit of all 
truth, and patience, and wisdom is leading; and their 
strivings and victories — ay, and their backslidings 



320 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

and reverses — are making clearer day by day that 
revelation of the kingdom of God in nature, through 
which it would seem that our generation, and those 
which are to follow us, will be led b&ck again to that 
higher revelation of the kingdom of God in man. 

Leaving then on one side the critical and historical 
inquiry, and starting from the assumption of the truth 
of revelation as commonly understood amongst us, 
and that Christ really was what He claimed to be, 
how does this bear on the question from which we 
started, — the kingship and government of the nations 
and people of the world in which we are living ? 

In order to answer the question to any good purpose 
for Englishmen, we must ascertain, if possible, what the 
common faith of English Christians is ; and to do this 
we may fairly turn, in the first place, to the Church of 
England, which even yet speaks with some authority. 
Her formularies and teaching have stood now for three 
hundred years as the expression of the faith of the 
English nation. This is gathered up for ordinary 
persons in the Book of Common Prayer, which has 
been in constant use, on one day at least, in every 
week, of every year, in every parish in the land. We 
all know that, besides the forms of prayer contained 
in that book, which are common to all days, there are 
special prayers and services for each week, and for 
each festival, intended to direct the mind of the 
nation in the act of worship to some particular side of 
the truth which the Church teaches. Referring to 
these, we find in the services for all those seasons 
which we, in common with the rest of Christendom 



THE END OF THE WHOLE MATTER. 321 

esteem most holy, one constant declaration as to the 
present actual existence of the kingdom of Christ, 
occurring over and over again. Thus, on the first day 
of the Christian year, Advent Sunday, we pray that we 
may cast away the works of darkness, and rise to the . 
life immortal, " through Him who liveth and reigneth 
with Thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever." On 
the Third Sunday in Advent, in the collect addressed 
directly to Christ himself, w r e pray that we may be 
found an acceptable people " in Thy sight, who livest 
and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, 
ever one God, world without end." On Christmas 
Day the same form occurs, and we are again testify- 
ing that Christ " liveth and reigneth." In the collect 
for the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany we speak of 
" His eternal and glorious kingdom," where He " liveth 
and reigneth." And so again and again, at the 
beginning of Lent, through Easter Week, on the 
Day of i\scension, the Sunday after Ascension, Whit- 
sunday, Trinity Sunday, we are still in the same 
key, repeating the same confession, and declaring 
in the most solemn manner, that Christ the Son 
of God has actually set up His kingdom in this 
world, and is, now and always, " living and reigning " 
in it. 

In the same series of services the Church of England 
places before the people, day after day, and week after 
week, lessons and passages from the Old Testament, 
for their guidance and instruction, and these are 
associated with passages from the New Testament 
selected apparently for the express purpose of showing, 

s.i* vin. v 



322 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

that the old covenant is not cancelled, but fulfilled 
and made perfect in the new. By this method we 
English churchmen have set before us in our child- 
hood, and kept before us all our lives, that wonderful 
picture of a nation ruled directly by God himself, 
and prospering, or falling into misery and confusion, 
precisely as they acknowledge or refuse to acknow- 
ledge this rule which the Jewish history contains. 
Whatever government they set up for themselves, the 
same results follow. Kings, priests, judges, whatever 
men succeed to, or usurp, or are thrust into power, 
come immediately under that eternal government 
which the God of the nation has established, and the 
order of which cannot be violated with impunity. 
Every ruler who ignores or defies it saps the national 
life and prosperity, and brings trouble on his country, 
sometimes swiftly, but always surely. There is the 
perpetual presence of a King, with whom rulers 
and people must come to a reckoning in every 
national crisis and convulsion, and who is no less 
present when the course of affairs is quiet and 
prosperous. The greatest and wisest men of the 
nation are those in whom this faith burns most 
strongly. Elijah's solemn opening, " As the Lord 
liveth, before whom I stand;" David's pleading, 
" Whither shall I go then from Thy presence, or 
whither shall I go from Thy Spirit ? " — his confession 
that in heaven or hell, or the uttermost parts of 
the sea, "there also shall Thy hand lead, and Thy 
right hand shall guide me," — are only well-known 
instances of a universal consciousness which never 



THE END OF THE WHOLE MA TTER. 32,3 

wholly leaves the men or the nation, however much 
they may struggle to get rid of it. 

The English Church thus forces on the notice of her 
members the constant presence of God in the old 
world, and the reality of His government of the 
nations, even of those which were ignorant of Him. 
She labours to make clear to them the sacredness of 
the material earth, and the truth that not only on the 
hill of Zion, but in the desert, on the great waters, in 
the city, as well as in the hearts and minds of men, 
there was always a Divine presence dwelling. Then, 
through that unbroken series of services to which 
reference has been made already, she declares that 
this presence has not left the earth, is not dwelling 
less with us English than with the old Hebrews, but 
has come nearer to us since the Son of God took flesh, 
and revealed to men that King and Father under 
whose government they are living, and declared that 
He would be with them always, even to the end of 
the world. 

This belief in this Divine government of the nations, 
which is thus wrought into the whole teaching and 
confession of the English Church, is probably held by 
all sects of nonconformists amongst us. Whatever their 
doctrines may be as to election and reprobation, or any 
of the other thousand and one shibboleths by which 
men's faith is tested, and too sorely tried, there is not 
one of them probably which, speaking authoritatively 
and deliberately, would not admit that Christ is 
" living and reigning," not only in the invisible, but 
here in the visible world, and that all rulers and 

Y 2 



324 LIhE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

governments are directly subject, and responsible, 
to Him. 

Turning from the Church to the nation, from 
teaching and theory to life and practice, we find at 
every step of our history the most striking confirma- 
tion of this witness. The revolt against all visible 
earthly authority in spiritual things, which had been 
smouldering for centuries, broke out in England, as 
elsewhere, at the time of the Reformation. Once for 
all, the nation then declared that they would have no 
man standing in the place of the King and Lord of their 
souls, and assuming to dispense with His laws ; that 
they were not and would not be responsible to any 
vicar of Christ, but only to God himself ; and Pope 
and priests, and all who supported them, must be 
taught this in the most direct and thorough manner. 
The English King was the true representative of the 
nation in this protest and revolt ; and the moral sense 
and conscience of the nation was behind him. And 
so it was solemnly declared by the Act of Supremacy, 
that " for the increase of virtue in Christ's religion 
within this realm of England, the King our sovereign 
Lord, his heirs and successors kings of this realm, 
shall be the only supreme head on earth of the Church 
of England." This direct responsibility of the nation, 
and of the King as the nation's representative, to God, 
was the root idea and principle of the Reformation 
in England, The Tudor princes (with the exception 
of course of Queen Mary) in their best moods acknow- 
ledged it, and acted on it ; and, while they did so, all 
went well. Whenever they or their successors forgot 



THE END OF THE WHOLE MA TTER. 



325 



it, again and again in the intervening 300 years, it 
has had to assert itself, often in the most unlooked-for 
ways, and by the strangest witnesses. And so it 
stands in our own day, the inheritance of many 
generations, as fresh, as clear, as strong as ever — a 
rock against which churches and sects may dash 
themselves, but which neither they, nor all the powers 
of earth, can shake. 

Had our kings and rulers recognised that one great 
principle of the Reformation, that there can be no 
spiritual authority on earth with the power to dis- 
pense with God's law, and bind and loose man's 
consciences, the other great revolt might never have 
come at all. But the Reformation had to do its 
work in due course, in temporal as well as spiritual 
things, in the visible as in the invisible world; for 
the Stuart princes asserted in temporal matters the 
powers which the Pope had claimed in spiritual. 
They, too, would acknowledge the sanctity of no law 
above the will of princes — would vindicate, even with 
the sword and scaffold, their own power to dispense 
with laws. So the second great revolt and protest 
of the English nation came, against all visible earthly 
sovereignty in things temporal. Puritanism arose, 
and Charles went to the block, and the proclamation 
went forth that henceforth the nation would have 
no King but Christ; that He was the only possible 
King for the English nation from that time forth, in 
temporal as -well as spiritual things, and that His 
kingdom had actually come. The national conscience 
was not with the Puritans as it had been with Henry 



S 26 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREA T. 

at the time of the Reformation, but the deepest part 
of their protest has held its own, and gained strength 
ever since, from their day to ours. The religious 
source and origin of it was, no doubt, thrust aside 
at the Revolution, but the sagacious statesmen of 
1688 were as clear as the soldiers of Ireton and 
Ludlow in their resolve, that no human will should 
override the laws and customs of the realm. So 
they, too, required of their sovereigns that they 
should ''solemnly promise and swear to govern the 
people of this kingdom of England, and the do- 
minions thereto belonging, according to the statutes 
in Parliament agreed on, and the laws and customs 
of the same ; . . . that they will to their power cause 
law and justice in mercy to be executed in all their 
judgments; . . . that they v/ill to the utmost of their 
power maintain the laws of God, the true profession 
of the Gospel, and the Protestant reformed religion 
established by law." The same protest in a far dif- 
ferent form came forth again at the great crisis at 
the end of the eighteenth century, when the revo- 
lutionary literature of France had set Europe in a 
blaze, and the idea of the rights of man had shrunk 
back, and merged in the will of the mob. Against 
this assertion of this form of self-will again the 
English nation took resolute ground. They had 
striven for a law which was above popes and kings, 
to which these must conform on pain of suppression. 
They strove for it now against mob law, against 
popular will openly avowing its own omnipotence, 
and making the tyrant's claim to do what was right 



THE END OF THE WHOLE MATTER. 327 

in its own <*yes. And so through our whole history 
the same thread has run. The nation, often con- 
fusedly and with stammering accents, but still on 
the whole consistently, has borne the same witness 
as the Church, that as God is living and reigning 
there must be a law, the expression of His will, at 
the foundation of all human society, which priests, 
kings, rulers, people, must discover, acknowledge, 
obey. 

The old question is coming up again for decision all 
over Europe. With us it is narrowed to a single and 
simple issue. There are several ways of putting it 
amongst us, but the result seems to be much the same. 
Whether by those who offer us as a substitute for God, 
" a collective humanity into which we are all to be ab- 
sorbed," or by those who teach that the people is " the 
collective interpreter of the will of God," the old faith 
is openly set aside, and we are told that infallibility 
is at last found for men, and resides in the majority. 
Such doctrines naturally outrage the historical claim- 
ant of infallibility on earth. Looking out at the 
universal ferment of Christendom, Pius IX. (in his 
Encyclical Letter of Dec. 8, 1864) denounces those 
"who dare to publish that the will of the people, 
manifested by what they call public opinion, or by 
other means, constitutes the supreme law, independent 
of all Divine or human law, and that, in political 
order, events which have been accomplished, by that 
very reason that they are accomplished, have the force 
of right." The alternative which the Pope would 
propose is one which we in England need not discuss ; 



328 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

but we are bound, at our peril, and shall be driven in 
our time, to consider, whether we are prepared to 
acknowledge collective humanity, or public opinion, 
or any other abstraction, as the supreme judge and 
king of our nation, and of all nations. We may 
despise the present advocates of social democracy, 
and a " confederate republic of Europe," and make 
merry over their sayings and doings at their conven- 
tions in Switzerland and elsewhere, but there is no 
man who knows what is really going on in England 
but will admit, that there will have to be a serious 
reckoning with them at no very distant day. 

Christians; then, may acknowledge at once that, as a 
rule, and in the long run, the decision of the people of a 
country, fairly taken, is likely to be right, and that the 
will of the people is likely to be more just and patient 
than that of any person or class. No one can honestly 
look at the history of our race in the last quarter of 
a century, to go no further back, and not gladly admit 
the weight of evidence in favour of this view. There 
is no great question of principle which has arisen in 
politics here, in which the great mass of the nation has 
not been from the first on that which has been at last 
acknowledged as the right side. In America, to take 
the one great example, the attitude of the Northern 
people from first to last, in the great civil war, will 
make proud the hearts of English-speaking men as 
long as their language lasts. 

The real public opinion of a nation, expressing its 
deepest convictions (as distinguished from what is 
ordinarily called public opinion, the first cry of pro- 



THE END OF THE WHOLE MATTER. 329 

fessional politicians and journalists, which usually 
goes wrong), is undoubtedly entitled to very great 
respect. But, after making all fair allowances, no 
honest man, however warm a democrat he may be, 
can shut his eyes to the facts which stare him in the 
face at home, in our colonies, in the United States, 
and refuse to acknowledge that the will of the majority 
in a nation, ascertained by the best processes yet 
known to us, is not always or altogether just, or 
consistent, or stable ; that the deliberate decisions of 
the people are not unfrequently tainted by ignorance, 
or passion, or prejudice. 

Are we, then, to rest contented with this ultimate 
regal power, to resign ourselves to the inevitable, and 
admit that for us, here at last in this nineteenth cen- 
tury, there is nothing higher or better to look for; 
and if we are to have a king at all, it must be king 
people or king mob, according to the mood in which 
our section of collective humanity happens to be ? 
Surely we are not prepared for this any more than the 
Pope is. Many of us feel that Tudors, and Stuarts, 
and Oliver Cromwell, and cliques of Whig or Tory 
aristocrats, may have been bad enough ; but that any 
tyranny under which England has groaned in the 
past has been light by the side of what we may come 
to, if we are to carry out the new political gospel 
to its logical conclusion, and surrender ourselves to 
government by the counting of heads, pure and simple. 

But if we will not do this, is there any alternative, 
since we repudiate personal government, but to fall 
back on the old Hebrew and Christian faith, that the 



33° LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 



nations are ruled by a living, present, invisible King, 
whose will is perfectly righteous and loving, the same 
yesterday, to-day, and for ever? It is beside the 
question to urge that such a faith throws us back on 
an invisible power, and that we must have visible 
rulers. Of course we must have visible rulers, even 
after the advent of the " confederate social republic of 
Europe." When the whole people is king it must have 
viceroys like other monarchs. But is public opinion 
visible ? Can we see " collective humanity " ? Is it 
easier for princes or statesmen — for any man or men 
upon whose shoulders the government rests — to ascer- 
tain the will of the people than the will of God ? 
Another consideration meets us at once, and that is, 
that this belief is assumed in our present practice. 
Not to insist upon the daily usage in all Christian 
places of worship and families throughout the land, 
the Parliament of the country opens its daily sittings 
with the most direct confession of this faith which words 
can express, and prays — addressing God, and not 
public opinion, or collective humanity — a Thy king- 
dom come. Thy will be done." Surely it were better 
to get rid of this solemn usage as a piece of cant, 
which must demoralize the representatives of the 
nation, if we mean nothing particular by it, and either 
recast our form of prayer, substituting " the people,' 5 
or what else we please, for " God," or let the whole 
business alone, as one which is past man's under- 
standing. If we really believe that a nation has no 
means of finding out God's will, it is hypocritical and 
cowardly to go on praying that it may be done. 



THE END OF THE WHOLE MATTER. 331 

That will may be unjust, unloving-, variable, for 
anything we know ; and as honest men and citizens 
we cannot wish, or ask, that our country maybe ruled 
by it. 

But it will be said, assuming all that is asked, what 
practical difference can it possibly make in the govern- 
ment of nations ? Admit as pointedly as you can, by 
profession and by worship, and honestly believe, that 
a Divine will is ruling in the world, and in each nation, 
what will it effect ? Will it alter the course of events 
one iota, or the acts of any government or governor ? 
Would not a Neapolitan Bourbon be just as ready to 
make it his watchword as an English Alfred ? Might 
not a committee of public safety placard the scaffold 
with a declaration of this faith ? It is a contention 
for a shadow. 

Is it so ? Does not every man recognise in his 
own life, and in his observation of the world around 
him, the enormous and radical difference between 
the two principles of action, and the results which 
they bring about ? What man do we reckon worthy 
of honour, and delight to obey and follow — him who 
asks when he has to act, what will A, B, and C say 
to this ? or him who asks, is this right, true, just, 
in harmony with the will of God ? Don't we despise 
ourselves when we give way to the former tendency, 
or, in other words, when we admit the sovereignty 
of public opinion ? Don't we feel that we are in 
the right and manly path when we follow the latter ? 
And if this be true of private men, it must hold 
in the case of those who are in authority. 



332 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 



Those rulers, whatever name they may go by, who 
turn to what constituents, leagues, the press are 
saying or doing, to guide them as to the course they 
are to follow, in the faith that the will of the majo- 
rity is the ultimate and only possible arbiter, will 
never deliver or strengthen a nation however skilful 
they may be in occupying its best places. 

All the signs of our time tell us that the day of 
earthly kings has gone by, and the advent to power 
of the great body of the people, those who live by 
manual labour, is at hand. Already a considerable 
percentage of them are as intelligent and provident 
as the classes above them, and as capable of con- 
ducting affairs, and administering large interests suc^ 
cessfully. In England, the co-operative movement, 
and the organization of the trade societies, should be 
enough to prove this, to any one who has eyes, and is 
open to conviction. In another generation that num- 
ber will have increased tenfold, and the sovereignty 
of the country will virtually pass into their hands. 
Upon their patriotism and good sense the for- 
tunes of the kingdom, of which Alfred laid the deep 
foundations a thousand years ago, will depend as 
directly and absolutely as they have ever depended 
on the will of earthly king or statesman. It is vain 
to blink the fact that democracy is upon us, that 
"new order of society which is to be founded by 
labour for labour," and the only thing for wise men 
to do is to look it in the face, and see how the 
short intervening years may be used to the best 
advantage. Happily for us, the task has been already 



THE END OF THE WHOLE MATTER. 333 

begun in earnest. Our soundest and wisest political 
thinkers are all engaged upon the great and inevitable 
change, whether they dread, or exult in, the prospect. 
Thus far, too, they all agree, that the great danger of 
the future lies in that very readiness of the people to 
act in great masses, and to get rid of personal and 
individual responsibility, which Is the characteristic 
of the organizations by which they have gained, and 
secured, their present position. Nor is there any 
difference as to how this danger is to be met. Our 
first aim must be to develop to the utmost the sense 
of personal and individual responsibility. 

But how is this to be done ? To whom are men 
wielding great powers to be taught that they are 
responsible ? If they can learn that there is still a 
King ruling in England through them, whom if they 
will fear they need fear no other power in earth or 
heaven, whom if they can love and trust they will 
want no other guide or helper, all will be well, and we 
may look for a reign of justice in England such as she 
has never seen yet, whatever form our government 
may take. But, in any case, those who hold the 
old faith will still be sure, that the order of Gods 
kingdom will not change. If the kings of the earth 
are passing away, because they have never acknow- 
ledged the order which was established for them, 
the conditions on which they were set in high places, 
those who succeed them will have to come under 
the same order, and the same conditions. When the 
great body of those who have done the hard work of 
the world, and got little enough of its wages hitherto 



334 LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

— the real stuff of which every nation is composed- 
have entered on their inheritance, they may sweep 
away many things, and make short work w T ith thrones 
and kings. But there is one throne which they cannot 
pull down — the throne of righteousness, which is over 
all the nations ; and one King whose rule they cannot 
throw off — the Son of God, and Son of Man, who 
will judge them as He has judged all kings and ail 
grovernments before them. 



THE END. 



LONDON : R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS, BREAD STREET HILL, 

3U77-2 



